I’ve released a new version of the Category Access Wordpress 2 plugin. This plugin allows the blog maintainer to restrict access to posts belonging to particular categories on a user-by-user basis.
New changes:
Download it on my code page.
Yesterday Christopher had his cochlear implant surgery. The short story is that it went really well.
We drove to Charlottesville on Wednesday to have our pre-op meeting with the surgeon, Dr. Hashasaki. Afterwards we stayed at Dorothy’s parents house. Christopher did pretty well with not being able to eat the day of the surgery… better than he did before when he had to go under anesthesia for the CT scan.
The morning of the operation, we dressed Christopher in his gown, and met with the nurses, anesthesiologist, and Dr. H.’s resident doctors. Overall we were impressed that there wasn’t much waiting around. By 11:00 they took him for the 11:30 surgery.
We waited until about 3:00, and Dr. Hashasaki gave us a call in the waiting lounge. He reported that the surgery went well, and that it only took 2 hours. Unfortunately, Christopher has so much baby fat that it took them a long time to get an IV into him. The good news is that they had him on gas so that he was knocked out and didn’t have to feel them poking him like a pincushion.
He also said that they tested the device in the operating room, and the Christopher’s brain was responding to the signals given to the implant. (We can’t really say that he could “hear sounds”, since they gave him electrical stimulation, and he was unconscious.)
We then went to the recovery room to sit with Christopher as he woke up. We wasn’t hardly a happy camper. He was swollen from the IV fluids they gave him, and woozy from being under the anesthesia. After about two hours we finally got our prescriptions and paperwork and were discharged.
On the way home he mostly slept, but he did wake up around Williamsburg. He was pretty groggy but I did get a little giggle from him. He pretty quickly found out that he had a headband and ear cup on. He slept most of the night, waking up around 6:30 this morning.
Today he’s still a little swollen looking in the face, but seems to feel just fine. His balance is a little shaky, but he’s still walking around a little. But as he woke up this morning he definitely didn’t want to have anything on his head. We ended up taking off the head gear, which Dr. H. said would be okay.
His incision looks clean. Apparently the stitches are inside… How they keep the outside of the skin together is a mystery to me… (glue?) The site of the surgery is a little swollen, and I think I can see where the magnet is under the skin. This is all good–I heard from some parents that their kid’s face is bruised, and their eyes swollen shut. Christopher just looks like Rocky Balboa the day after a fight.
Here are some pictures. WARNING: the last few are of the surgery site.
So the bionic baby is doing great!
Christopher lately has been taking a few steps on his own. This usually ends with him going into a crawl, but at least he’s trying. He can stand on his own pretty well now.
I’ve released a new version of the Category Access Wordpress 2 plugin. This plugin allows the blog maintainer to restrict access to posts belonging to particular categories on a user-by-user basis.
New changes:
Download it on my code page.
I’ve released a new version of the Category Access Wordpress 2 plugin. This plugin allows the blog maintainer to restrict access to posts belonging to particular categories on a user-by-user basis.
New changes:
Download it on my code page.
Moving from the Windows world to the Mac world, I encountered a number of annoyances while trying to make my Mac comfortable. Below is a list of software and tweaks I’ve made to get things “just right”.
Good software that is free:
Good software that is not free:
Unsolved Problems:
I’d appreciate any help on fixing the following issues.
Can’t be fixed:
Solutions to Annoyances:
Good resources:
Congrats go out to Steven, Tammy, and Diego on the new addition to their family, Dominic James Coppit. My dad now has another grandchild, and this time one that shares his name! He was born early this morning, at around 4 am at a weight of 6 pounds 9 ounces. Pictures:
This is a post about politics. But first I have to describe the old honor system at the University of Virginia. (I say “old” because it’s in the process of being revised.)
UVa’s honor system was originally concieved as a single sanction system, meaning that any student proven to have lied, cheated, or stolen would be expelled. Expulsion was the only recourse, and violations were investigated by the accused student’s peers.
On its surface, the policy seems to be a strong deterrent against such dishonorable behavior. But the problem is that the punishment is too strong in the sense that students are reticent to impose it for minor infractions. Indeed, convicted students have sued the University and the honor committee, and the president has overturned the decision of the committee.
Given the risk of being sued, and having the results of a trial overturned, it’s no wonder that students and faculty at UVa are both reticent to turn someone in for honor violations. When I was a graduate student there, the prevailing attitude was “Why bother? It’s not worth the hassle.” A recent survey is illuminating.
What does any of this have to do with politics? Well, consider this: What recourse does the populace have if the president violates the law? Only one: impeachment.
In cases such as that of Nixon, where it is clear that the president has abused his power, impeachment is clearly warranted. But what about cases where a small violation has occurred, but not “high crimes and misdemeanors”? Or cases where the violation is not clearly for political gain?
For example, President Bush has claimed that he does not need to follow the FISA law when acting in defense of the nation. But this law was enacted precisely to give judicial oversight to wiretaps in such national defense situations!
Also consider that the president has issued “signing statements” when singing bills into law. Some of these statements indicate that the president wants the executive branch to ignore some details of the laws. For example, Bush signed a law banning torture, but his signing statement says that he has sole authority over the matter.
Bush has never vetoed a law. This is particularly curious for a president that believes in a strong executive. These signing statements explain why: he intends to ignore the law, rather than veto it and force the congress to explictly override him. If one compares the laws to his statements, the differences are quite surprising.
In my view, the president is taking advantage of the single sanction problem just as cheating students at UVa have. By ignoring the law, the president forces the congress to carefully consider whether the president has done enough to warrant such a serious punishment. By claiming “intelligence failures”, “misunderstood authorization”, etc., the president has plausible deniability against charges of “high crimes and misdemeanors”. Without a smoking gun, congress is unlikely to impeach.
Former congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman has written an article comparing the impeachment of Richard Nixon to current calls for impeachment of George W. Bush. She cites Bush’s record on wiretaps, torture, and the case for war in Iraq. Will it happen? Not unless there is clear evidence that Bush intentionally violated his oath of office.
What options does congress have? It can censure the president, but I don’t consider this a real sanction as it has no associated consequences beyond bad publicity. It can block the president’s legislative agenda, but they won’t do that for fear of appearing obstructionist. Cutting funding for the war in Iraq is another option, but then they’ll be painted as unpatriotic.
So impeachment remains the only effective sanction for the president, and just like the UVa honor system, allows a myriad of lesser crimes to go unpunished. Given that the Republican-controlled congress is unlikely to galvanize to punish the president’s excesses of power, I think we can expect the president’s power to grow under the cover of a “war” on terrorism that will never end.
We’re back from Colorado. Everyone went out to see Gabrielle and Joshua graduate. We also stayed a couple extra days as a bit of a vacation. It was really nice–Dorothy rented a house in Estes Park, which is in the Rockies and 15 minutes from Rocky Mountain National Park. We saw lots of Elk and Mule Deer. (Differentiating the two was the source of much discussion.)
Joshua’s Graduation:
Gabrielle’s graduation:
Pictures from Golden, Colorado Springs, Estes Park, and Denver:
After the penny-swallowing incident, you’d think that I would be in the bad parent doghouse. I was, but it was short-lived. Check out this photo:
Look carefully at Christopher in the background. It looks like he’s eating something. It turns out it was a cigarette! He is biting off the ashes–yuk. So any time Dorothy brings up the penny, I can bring up the cigarette. 
Recently Apple switched from PowerPC to Intel chips. This is a great move, because Intel chips run both faster and more efficiently. It also means that Macs can run Windows alongside Apple’s OS X more easily, with very little performance loss.
Mac laptops come in two flavors: the smaller MacBook and the more powerful MacBook Pro. Macs are easier to use, safer from the nastiness that plagues PCs, and just better engineered all around. If you look at the new series of Apple ads, they hit all the high points. I compared Dell’s prices to Apple’s and they are very close. Even if Apple prices were higher, I would say it’s worth it. (Would you prefer to buy a Ford or a Toyota? Pay the extra and you’ll avoid the hassles.)
However, one thing the ads don’t talk about is the fact that the new Macs can run Windows very well. (When the MacBook Pros came out, they were actually the fastest laptops to run Windows!) You can configure your Mac to boot into either Windows or OS X, but the Parallels company is going to be releasing software that allows you to run Windows inside of OS X. This means you can still run all the software that you already have. But to tell you the truth, there’s nothing I miss from the Windows world–I can get Acrobat, Microsoft Office, Firefox, and other software for the Mac.
MacBooks start at about $1200, and MacBook Pros at about $2200. If you are sick of dealing with Windows-based PCs that work fine for 3 months then start breaking down or running slow, I suggest you switch to Mac now. There’s really no reason not to. If you already have a monitor, keyboard and mouse, you can even buy a Mac Mini for $600. Apple has a nice laptop comparison chart.
Check out this x-ray:
Dorothy says it’s proof that I’m not careful enough with him. In my defense, when he was chewing I did retrieve a little plastic label. Tricksie boy must have had more than one thing in his cheeks. Besides, the fact that the doctor said just to wait a day or so and it will pass vindicates my position that kids are pretty tough.
Okay, the new surgery date for Christopher is June 21st, three days after his birthday. It’s only a few weeks after the original date, but the delay really sucks. Lately he’s been waving to us a lot, so clearly he’s ready to communicate…
Well, we found out the cause of Christopher’s deafness today. It seems that he has the so-called “Connexin 26″ cause. Actually, he inherited two recessive mutations from us.
Click the “more” link for the full report. On the one hand this news is comforting in that we now know the cause, and it wasn’t because we anything we did. It also means that our future kids are more likely to be deaf as well, although I don’t know how much more likely. So, if you’re related to either me or Dorothy, answer “yes” to the question about a family history of deafness.
Anthem of Virginia has denied our request to have Christopher’s operation done 3 weeks shy of his first birthday. I suppose it’s because the FDA recommends cochlear implant surgery as 12 months of age.
Oh well… The surgeon’s assistant said they would try to work us in the day after his 1 year birthday.
The last few weeks I’m been spending all my non-teaching time implementing the next version of Spotlight. Spotlight is a plugin for Eclipse that implements the notion of software plans.
Software has been traditionally implemented in one view, compared to the multi-view representations used to represent designs in other disciplines. Source code is a lot like cubist art–every perspective in one representation. My research has tried to provide multiple views of code, thereby more naturally representing concerns of interest separate from irrelevant concerns.
The new implementation is coming along nicely, and hopefully will be ready for public consumption soon.
I’ve released a new version of the Category Order Wordpress 2 plugin. This plugin allows the blog administrator to set an explicit ordering, spacing, and indentation of categories in the category list that appears in the sidebar. The administrator specifies the ordering in the new “Category Order” management page. There is also an option for placing the category post count inside the link.
New changes:
Many thanks to David Lucash for his help on this release.
A screenshot shows the management page. Download it on my code page.
I’ve released a new version of the Category Access Wordpress 2 plugin. This plugin allows the blog maintainer to restrict access to posts belonging to particular categories on a user-by-user basis.
New changes:
Many thanks to Paul Magnowski, Pierre Lauvergnier, and David Katz for their work and input on this release.
Download it on my code page.
Here’s a super-cute video of Christopher. I took it in the hotel room during my recent trip to Delaware. Christopher is in a playpen for the night, but he’s obviously not ready to go to sleep just yet.
Saturday Daniel, Carmen and Maryanne came to celebrate Dan’s birthday. We all went to Christiana Campbell’s for dinner. They think we were put in the same room that they were in two decades ago when Daniel was visiting schools.
Christopher was good a dinner as usual. We just had to limit what he could reach. It’s good that he can eat bread now. We gave him some of our “drop” rolls, and they also brought him some applesauce, which was nice.
Afterward we walked up to the capitol building, but we came back because it was starting to get cold.
