Installing Adobe Flash Player on Firefox

Or: forty years of wandering in a desert of unhelpful Adobe links

After one tooth-gnashing hour of frustration, I have managed to install the Adobe Flash Player 10.1 plug-in on my Firefox 3.6.4. Why it was so difficult, I don't know. I'm pretty sure I performed the same installation at work without a hitch. That discrepancy may have something to do with the fact that my work computer is running Windows 7 Enterprise and this computer is running Windows XP Professional. I don't know.

One thing I do know is that if I'm having problems with Adobe, I'm probably not the only one, so I feel it is my duty as a citizen of the human race to provide the solution I eventually uncovered.

But first, a detailed description of my travails. It will be like Passover in summer. (You can go straight to the solution if you want. I won't be offended.)

Why is This Installation Different From All Other Installations?

Firefox usually takes charge of installing its own plug-ins. But Adobe Flash Player 10.1 doesn't want to let Firefox install it. It wants to install itself, via its own installation manager plug-in, GetPlusPlus. It's like a boy who doesn't want Mommy to dress him anymore, because he's a Big Boy now, only he winds up putting his underpants on backward and his shoes on the wrong feet.

How Did It All Start?

I downloaded the latest Firefox upgrade. Everytime you download a new version of Firefox, it takes you to a web page detailing what's new with this release. This time, the page included a scary yellow message telling me I must install the latest Adobe Flash Player for security reasons.

I followed the link provided to the download page. By the way, as long as I'm kvetching about Adobe (which didn't used to suck), may I remark on how annoying it is when a download page includes another piece of software without asking you, with the checkbox already checked, so that if you don't notice and uncheck it, you can end up installing something you don't want or need? In the case of Adobe Flash Player, McAfee Security Scan Plus is the piece of stealth software. However, I'd already had that experience at work, so I was prepared, and unchecked the checkbox.

Then I hit the installation button, and it took me to the Thank You page. These pages usually say, "If the download does not start automatically, click here." This one had a twist on the old theme: "If it does not start, click here for troubleshooting information [italics added]." It was my first moment of annoyance, and there were many more to come.

What Went Wrong?

The download didn't start automatically, of course. Firefox helpfully popped up its little top frame letting me know I was missing a plug-in: the aforementioned download manager. Since there didn't seem to be any way to download one plug-in without first installing another, I clicked on the button on the frame. A window opened asking me if I wanted to manually install the plug-in, which was in a file called gp.xpi. So I agreed to that, Firefox downloaded the file, and a window asked me what application I wanted to use to open the file. Surprisingly, it suggested an application, but that didn't matter because it didn't work.

After a few futile tries, I thought I might have to look at Adobe's troubleshooting page. It was no help, but the thank you page did also say, "For Firefox users, please see the Installation Instructions." So I did, and that's when my blood pressure really started going up, because the instructions, and screen shots, seemed to have no relationship to Firefox whatsoever. "LOOK FOR A YELLOW BAR AT THE TOP," the instructions advised (in all caps). The screen shot showed a button marked "Edit Options."

If I ever found that button, I certainly would have clicked it. At the top of WHAT? (I was starting to think in all caps myself.) Not at the top of the browser, since that bar didn't have any button marked "Edit Options," only the button that led me on the merry dance with gp.xpi. I looked all over the place. I opened the Add-ons window: not there. I went into Options. There, under Security, I found something that looked hopeful. Not anything mentioned in Adobe's instructions--no, those appear to have been written by space aliens. But I did find a checkbox marked "Warn me when sites try to install add-ons" next to a button marked "Exceptions." I clicked that button and it did indeed open a box that looked just like the one in Adobe's second screen shot ("ADD THE WEB SITE TO THE SITES WHICH ARE ALLOWED TO INSTALL ADD-ONS").

So I got there in the end, even if not by the non-existent button Adobe recommended. I added Adobe to the list of sites, and hit the Refresh button as advised in the next step. Unfortunately, it didn't work. None of the things that Adobe said would happen as a result of that action actually happened. I remained unable to install the plug-in that would let me install the plug-in.

Did You Eventually Get GetPlusPlus Installed?

Yes I did, and I highly recommend you not bother. Once I was finished letting Adobe's useless instructions work me into a lather, I turned to Oracle Google and found this handy page: Install a Firefox Add-on Manually. Manually installing a plug-in turned out to be very easy once you knew how, and soon GetPlusPlus was safely ensconced. Thinking all would be well, I went back to the Adobe download page and refreshed it. GetPlusPlus launched, it showed me a progress bar, it filled the bar up with a pretty green colour, and then it choked. "Installation failed," it said. And that was all. No more meaningful error message, no useful information. Nothing. I tried three times, with identical results.

So How Did You Finally Get Adobe Flash Player?

I got creative. As much as Adobe wanted to download and install its own plug-ins, it didn't seem equal to the task. So here's what I did. I went to YouTube. I selected a random video. Firefox opened its top frame letting me know I was missing a plug-in. I clicked the Install button. And it installed. Firefox was doing the installing, so it worked. This is the route I would recommend to any Firefox user who is having trouble getting the plug-in at the Adobe page. Until they get their act together, don't even waste your time trying to do it their way. Save yourself an hour or two of aggravation.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you already have an older version of the Adobe Flash Plug-in in your Firefox, remove or disable it before trying this trick. I didn't have to because Adobe's abortive installation attempts had already done it for me (I think). If you already have an older plug-in, going to a video will only make the video play.

The Kobo eReader: a Long-term Review

The Kobo eReader, a lower-priced alternative to devices such as the Kindle, has launched in Chapters and Indigo bookstores across Canada on May 1, and will launch in Borders bookstores in the United States on June 17. Having rejected the Kindle as too expensive and proprietary and the Sony as too slow in its page-turning, I awaited the Kobo eagerly and pounced on it as soon as it became available. Had I reviewed it during those first two weeks, the result would have been about ninety percent gush. Now that I've had a month to live with the Kobo and learn its little quirks--now that the honeymoon glow has faded, I am in a position to dispassionately discuss its strong points and shortcomings, and even those bugs that reveal themselves only upon extensive use.

Advantages

Price

Indeed, the $149 price tag is what first attracted me to the Kobo. The first e-reader I ever heard of was the Kindle, which at that time cost over $300. My initial question was, how many e-books would you have to buy to make back your money? Thirty? It would take years. I didn't see the point of bothering with e-books when such an extraordinary initial investment was involved. (Let's not even get into the iRex iLiad, with its US$859 price tag.)

Pre-Kobo, I'd looked into the possibility of getting my hands on a Sony e-reader that is no longer made, the PRS-505. For reasons known only to themselves, Sony chose to discontinue this e-reader, cutting their line down to only two, one that is too expensive (the PRS-600) and one that is too small (the PRS-300). If you don't want to shell out for the touch-screen, your other option is the piddling 5-inch screen. I don't care if my e-reader has a touch screen or not, and in my experience, they don't respond very well, in addition to getting covered in finger grease. Neither do I require all the other bells and whistles, such as 3G wireless access and the whiz-bang rotating display, to say nothing of Internet surfing. I want an e-reader in order to read books on it; isn't that really the point? Kobo, it seems, is the first company to clue into this. I might not have bought the Kobo e-reader if I'd found a reasonably-priced PRS-505 before it came out, but owners of PRS-505s charge high prices for their used e-readers. They seem to believe they are collector's items.

Page-turning Speed

I am glad that I didn't get a PRS-505, though, because it probably wouldn't have turned pages fast enough to suit me. I have tried out both the current Sony e-readers and the page-turning is uncomfortably slow, taking as long as 4 seconds. This is the Sony e-readers' primary weakness. I'm a fast reader, and I want to be able to turn pages on an e-reader at least as fast as I turn them on a real book. Kobo pages turn in about 2 seconds, which is just about right. New chapters are slower to load, but as that's an event of much less frequent occurrence, it's not a concern.

Design

I like the uncluttered design of the Kobo. Why does the Kindle have an entire keyboard? What is the need for that? It's space that they could have given over to a larger screen. Despite its smaller overall dimensions, the Kobo's screen is 6 inches across, same as the Kindle. It has a matte finish that emits minimal glare, providing a comfortable reading experience.

100 Free eBooks

The Kobo comes with 100 free public domain classics, more than any other e-reader. This is a nice perk. While it's true that all those books and more can be downloaded for free from sites like Project Gutenberg and ePubBooks, it would take some time to download all one hundred of them. Plus the Kobo versions come with prettier covers. It feels as if you're getting your money's worth immediately. After all, if you wanted to, you could read your Kobo for years without having to buy any new e-books, and fill in all those gaps in your classical literature education.

Prompt, Respectful and Helpful Customer Service

In response to a discrepancy between my experience and what was stated in the user manual--which I will describe in more detail later on--I wrote an email to Kobo customer service. I got a better response than I have received from any other customer service agent I've ever dealt with via email. This may say more about the dismal quality of online customer service in general than it does about Kobo's, but I had never before had the experience of having my issue fully understood and appropriately addressed on first contact. I'm more accustomed to the agent not reading my email carefully and so telling me things that I already know and that have no bearing on the problem. Or worse, copy/pasting a section of their help file into an email and sending it to me. Obviously I read all available documentation before contacting customer service. I don't need to have customer service waste my time in this way, nor am I an idiot, but the average customer service agent appears to assume that all the emails they receive come from idiots, and treats them accordingly. It is insulting and ultimately does not solve the problem.

I didn't get this from Kobo customer service. I got an email that carefully addressed every issue I'd brought up and told me exactly what I needed to know. It was most refreshing.

Kobo's shortcomings

User Settings Not Retained

When I'd just brought the Kobo home and was still working out what I could do with it, such was my enthusiasm that I read the user manual all the way through. I know, I know--I'll have to turn in my Techno Geek membership badge. Anyway, I discovered I could change the display of the book list, to make it look like books sitting on shelves--cute! I could also change the sort order from title to author. I preferred that. I liked seeing how many books by a particular author I had--Jane Austen is especially well-represented.

I was perfectly happy with these features until I turned the e-reader on the next day and discovered that everything I'd changed had reverted back to the defaults.

The Kobo e-reader will remember what books you are reading, displaying them in a separate list, and will bounce you straight to your current page when you select them. Why on earth can't it also remember and retain your display settings? This seems like quite the careless oversight.

Missing Features

Another thing I learned by reading the manual is that you can remove books from your "I'm Reading" list--that's the list of books you have started to read but not finished--by plugging the e-reader into your computer, logging into your Kobo account and clicking on "I'm Reading." I tried that, but could not locate "I'm Reading."

When I contacted customer service, (a positive experience, as mentioned above,) I was told is that there is no "I'm Reading" section in Kobo Online, and no way to remove books from your "I'm Reading" list. This feature hasn't been implemented yet.

I daresay it might have been wiser to hold off on adding its description to the manual until the feature itself was safely functional in the Kobo. After all, it's not as if the manual is a print publication. Appropriately enough, it's an e-book. Reprinting it and sending it to the customers when appropriate should be no very difficult or expensive thing. Furthermore, it's not a great idea to draw your customer's attention to handy little features that your product doesn't have.

Minimal Formats

Kobo supports only two formats, ePub and PDF. This is not very many, and is the one thing that made me hesitate before buying one. I bought it anyway because I knew I could convert other formats, such as HTML and word processing documents, into PDF. When I did so, I discovered quite the colourful bug. More on that later. Kobo promises to add more formats later. Readers who feel it important to have good format support might want to wait until then before purchasing.

Room for Improvement in the Big Blue Button

In his review of the Kobo Reader in the National Post, Mark Medley memorably declared about its famous big blue button, "a pox on whoever designed this thing." I have not found it as troublesome as he has, but it doesn't need to click so emphatically. One day, I was sitting on the couch reading one of my freebie Jane Austen novels. James sat at the other end, using his computer. Several pages later, James turned to me and said, "Reading e-books is a lot noisier than reading regular books." My clicking was disturbing him.

We also wonder why the choice was made to place the big blue button (Kobo calls it the directional pad or D-pad, but that's never going to stick) in the right corner. It would have been more convenient to have it in the middle, where it would be equally accessible to both hands. I suppose they might have been imitating true books, whose pages you turn by grasping the right corner, but there was no need for that and no advantage in doing it. No button is going to feel like turning pages anyway, and they may as well have put it where it would have worked best.

eBook Formatting and Proofreading (or Lack Thereof)

About those free e-books... they're not that nicely formatted. There is no indenting, and italics are represented with underscores. Sub-chapters have not been properly rendered. James is reading Madame Bovary on the e-reader, and was puzzled when he finished chapter 13 and turned the page, only to find himself apparently back at chapter 1. It turns out that Madame Bovary is in multiple parts. There are 13 chapters in Part 1, and when you finish that part, you come to Chapter 1 of Part 2. But the parts are not shown in the table of contents; only the individual chapters. James also found multiple misspelled words, as though the novel had been scanned in and then not proofread.

Kobo is using the 100 free books as a selling point. It would have been a better one if they'd gone to more effort to format the books.

Unnecessary Lights That Don't Work Properly

Besides reduced eyestrain, the greatest advantage of the non-backlit E Ink screens found on true e-readers like the Kobo (as opposed to multipurpose devices like the iPad) is the low power usage. Eco-friendly E Ink screens only draw power when the image onscreen is changing, for example, when you're turning a page. So it seems a shame that the Kobo company chose to put two indicator lights into their e-reader. I don't know how much this ups the power consumption, but I would imagine the percentage must be sizable.

The red light is meant to go on when your e-reader is fully charged. This is useful and arguably necessary, or at least it would be if it worked. In actual fact, this untrustworthy light often goes on well before the e-reader is fully charged, and pointlessly stays on even after the e-reader has been unplugged.

The blue light, on the other hand, is useless and silly. It goes on when the e-reader is processing: when you're turning a page or bringing up a new book or chapter. Or rather, that's what it does some of the time. It seems to operate fairly randomly. But in any case, you don't need a light to tell you that a page is turning; you know when a page is turning, because the screen flashes a negative image of itself. All the E Ink screens I've seen do this; it seems to be an unalterable part of their functioning. The e-reader also displays a little sunburst shape in the upper right corner when loading a new book or chapter, and in contrast to the light, it does so consistently, rendering the light even more redundant and pointless.

The only positive aspect I've noted about these lights is that they both come on at the same time when you turn the e-reader on, resulting in an attractive purple colour. Other than that, their primary impact is to force you to charge your e-reader more frequently.

Bug Report

After converting a Word document to PDF and loading it into the e-reader, I decided I wanted to make a change to its table of contents. I regenerated the PDF and reloaded the document into the reader.

To add a new document to the Kobo, you plug the e-reader into your computer's USB port, where it is treated just like a memory stick, and copy the new file onto it. But when I copied the new version of my file onto the Kobo and booted it up, the document turned out to be unchanged. My alterations to the table of contents were missing. It looked as if the Kobo did not recognize and implement the file change when a file with the same name was copied over the old version. What I had to do was delete the original version, unplug the reader and let it recognize the change, then plug it back in and copy the new file. I had to go through that whole tedious process every time I changed the file. That's bug number one.

After deleting the old file and copying the new one, I discovered that each chapter title now appeared twice in the table of contents! Neither of the two pointed to the right page either.

Thinking something must have gone wrong with the generation of the table of contents, I went back to the Word document, regenerated the TOC, and generated and loaded a third PDF. It looked fine in Acrobat Reader, but once loaded into Kobo, it now had three of everything in its table of contents.

After much frustrating deleting, unplugging, plugging back in, copying, regenerating and so on, my table of contents getting ever longer, I began to wonder if the file deletion was in fact complete. Perhaps the file was only removed from the document list, its table of contents remaining intact? Then, when a new version was introduced, perhaps its new table of contents entries were being appended to the old.

Acting on this hunch, I renamed the file and copied it into the reader. This time, its table of contents was fine.

Apparently, Kobo accumulates ghostly tables of contents that can never be eliminated, never sent to their rest. Whooooo...

Conclusion

Although the Kobo eReader has its shortcomings, they are minor (except for the lights; as an eco-worrier, that really bugs me), outweighed by the device's advantages, and many of them can probably be repaired in later software releases. If money is no object for you, you'll probably want to go with something more high-end--the iRex iLiad looks quite nice. But if reluctance to drop a few hundred dinero is the only thing preventing you from shelling out for an e-reader, then the Kobo may be the one for you.

Silliest New Product Award 2009

Once again, the time has come to bestow the Silliest New Product Award. A long time has passed since I last gave out this award, for Bagel-fuls. But please understand that this award is not just for any minor foolish product. If it was, I could give it out weekly. But no--a Silliest New Product must scale the Everest of foolishness. And at last, we have a contender.

Once again, the product in question is a food product. I will have to start keeping an eye out for foolish devices or articles of clothing. I don't want to limit myself to food, although admittedly it's something I get passionate about. This food product is even sillier than Bagel-fuls was. It add a whole new dimension to silly food, in my opinion. There's no denying that our society is loaded with silly food, even dangerous silly food. Yes, we keep trying to find ways to stuff more caffeine into our beverages. Yes, our desserts are so sweet that sugar is often the first ingredient. And let's not forget poutine.

The thing is, though, we know that that sort of stuff is junk food. People may joke that poutine is a meal, but they don't eat it as such too often, unless they actively want to die young. As much junk food as we eat--and we eat a lot of it--at least we are aware, however dimly, that it's not a real meal, and not something we should be eating very often.

But what if some daring and black-hearted individual should redefine the meal? What if you could eat something that was incredibly bad for your health, but still feel as if you'd had a perfectly adequate meal and were not doing anything wrong? For such is the cunning of my award recipient that he, whoever he may be, has entirely redefined the concept of "meal" in just such a revolutionary way.

Oh, we've had meal redefinition before. Don't get me wrong. I am aware of the bold stroke that created the TV dinner: meals apportioned out in a partitioned foil tray. (That was before the advent of microwaves, of course; now it's a partitioned plastic tray.)

Still, the TV dinner, and its offspring, the nukeable dinner, continue to give lip service to the idea of food groups. Some form of vegetable matter still constitutes part of the meal. Said vegetables may be limp and tasteless and people may not eat them, but at least they're there.

Then there's the junk food meal, with its three food groups: hunk of meat with filler, bun, and fries stuffed into a little cardboard packet. Admittedly, the vegetables are absent, but at least some degree of food groupage remains. Also, look at the name. We recognize that this is junk. We don't take it seriously. That's important. In this age of rising obesity and diabetes rates, it may be little enough to hold onto, but it's something.

The real coup has come with the throwing out of food groups altogether. Now, it seems, we are ready to accept the concept of a meal consisting of just one food group, and in a form almost totally devoid of fiber and nutrients. At least, somebody thinks we are, and frighteningly enough, he may be right. It is a stroke of Lex Luthor-like genius. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... drumroll, please... Domino's Pasta in a Bread Bowl.

That's right. What's pasta made of? White flour. What's the bread bowl made of? White flour. So you have a situation where someone can consume a great big lump of refined flour product with a little bit of creamy sauce on top (also containing white flour) and consider that he or she has eaten a meal.

This is bad, folks. This is very, very bad, although perhaps it is the logical end of decades of addiction-fueled, simple-carbohydrate binging. But I don't think we can just blame the consumer in this instance. I refuse to believe that Domino's has been hounded by people crying, "Stop serving us our pasta in real bowls--we want it in pizza dough! It's the only way we can get enough bready stuff!" No. I think what's going on here is that Domino's is actively trying to kill us.

This brings up the question: Why is Domino's trying to kill us? My best guess is, for the fun of it. I think they're serving up those bread bowls and then hunkering down like Kilroy and peeking through the little window where the waitresses leave the orders, watching as the customer eats his "meal" and giggling maniacally to themselves. Perhaps saying things like, "Oh my God, he's eating it! What a moron!" Much like Colbert Report viewers did when that suicidal guy ate a fifteen-pound burger.

Now, you may argue that this is a shortsighted way to do business. Sure, you have a little fun watching the mayhem. Sure, your customers' addiction to simple carbohydrates gets even worse, and you do a brisk business for a while. But then they die, and where is your business then? OK, there's a new generation, but if they do the same thing, they'll die untimely deaths as well, and eventually the shrinking population is going to impact your bottom line, right? It's not a good long term plan, is it?

To which I'd respond, hey, it's worked for the producers of cheap alcohol. So far, anyway. And let's face it, most businesses are based on short-term gain. Hell, the whole economy's based on short-term gain. That's why nobody wants to do anything about global warming.

But I sense myself drifting off-topic, so let me just return to the point and say, Dominos, you suck. Once, you seduced me with your Extravaganza pizza. But with Pasta in a Bread Bowl, I have lost all respect for you.

Cast-on, the Foundation of Knitting

Before you can knit anything, you have to cast on. That is, you have to place a row of stitches on your knitting needle. Casting on is an essential element of knitting that does not always get the attention it is due. I suspect that there is many an elderly lady out there who has been knitting all her life and never used anything but the buttonhole cast-on, thus impoverishing many a knitted garment. It's unfortunate, especially since these grandmotherly types often don't know their way around a computer very well and are not likely to find their way to my blog. Still, I hope my cast-on roundup with be useful to those who do.

Cast-Ons All Knitters Should Know

Buttonhole Cast-On

Let's get the most basic cast-on out of the way first. The buttonhole cast-on is the easiest and commonest of the cast-ons. Here's how you do it:

Step Zero

Make a slip knot in the yarn, slip the needle through the loop, and tighten.

I call this step zero because, in the case of buttonhole cast-on, it's not really necessary. I don't usually bother to do it. I just do one stich more than I need (see following steps), which falls away once you've knitted all your required stitches.

In fact, if you're using buttonhole cast-on for its eponymous purpose--to create a buttonhole--Step 0 is completely pointless and must be skipped.

Step 1

Loop yarn counter-clockwise around your index finger.

Step 2

Insert the knitting needle into the stitch in the same direction as the finger. Slide finger out and tighten stitch on needle, but leave a little slack. Overly tight buttonhole-cast-on stitches are hell to knit.

Repeat steps 1 and 2 until you have sufficient stitches.

The buttonhole cast-on has its advantages. It's easy and fast to do, and that makes it fun as well--watching the stitches pop off your finger and onto the needle, one after the other, as if by magic. If you're a brand-new knitter, it's the cast-on you should learn to do first, as it's easy and will help you get the hang of cast-ons in general. It's also serviceable if you need to add extra stitches to a piece of knitting already in process--say, if you're making a buttonhole. But the cons outnumber the pros. The buttonhole cast-on is more difficult to knit than any other. Being only loops with a twist, the stitches readily tighten up until you can't get your needle in, and then you have to work them loose with your fingers. There is no distinction between one stitch and another, so as you go, the loose piece of yarn between the knitted stitch and the stitch not yet knitted gets longer and longer. For this reason, buttonhole cast-on should only be used when a small number of stitches are required.

Finally, buttonhole cast-on results in a tight, unyielding edge. If you want an edge that is at all stretchy, for a cuff for example, your best bet is the longtailed or thumb cast-on, but even the cable cast-on will work better than the buttonhole.

This is the tragedy of so many handmade knits. If you have ever received a gift of hand-knitted socks or mittens, or perhaps a sweater, or if you have ever taken a close look at such products in a flea market, you have probably seen it: a ribbed cuff that terminates in an unyielding little band that renders all that nice stretchy ribbing pointless, a band that barely permits your hand (or foot, whichever the case) to pass. That's the buttonhole cast-on. It's the only cast-on that many people know. Let's all work to change that.

Cable Cast-On

A step up from the buttonhole is the cable cast-on. While still not your best bet for a stretchy edge, it's an improvement on the buttonhole. The advantage of both these cast-ons is that you can use them to add stitches to a knitted piece in progress, something you can't do with the stretchier (and more fun) longtailed cast-on.

Step 1

Make a slip knot in the yarn (as shown above), slip the needle through the loop, and tighten.

Step 2

Insert the other needle into the stitch knitwise. (To insert a needle knitwise means "as if to knit." This is in contrast to purlwise: "as if to purl." When you knit, you insert the right-hand needle in the same direction as the left-hand needle. When you purl, you insert the right-hand needle in the opposite direction as the left-hand needle.)

Knit, pull the stitch through and over the tip of the left-hand needle. This makes the second stitch.

Step 3

Insert the right-hand needle in between the last stitch created and the one before. Knit, pull the stitch through and place it over the tip of the left-hand needle.

Repeat step 3 until you have sufficient stitches.

So basically, with cable cast-on, you knit the stitches onto the needle, first through the original stitch, and subsequently in between the last and next-to-last stitches.

Why is the cable cast-on called that? I don't know, so I'll hazard a guess. It's called cable cast-on because it's used as a beginning for cable knitting, and the reason it's used for cable knitting is because cable knitting doesn't require an especially stretchy edge. If you're knitting a cable sweater, it will probably have ribbed cuffs and lower edge, and for those you'd want a stretchy edge. But you could be knitting a cable afghan, for which a stretchy edge is not so vital. You could still use longtailed cast-on if you wanted to; it's just that there'd be no big advantage to it.

Don't start your cable afghan with a buttonhole cast-on though. Don't start any major project with a buttonhole cast-on. Save buttonhole cast-on for buttonholes and practice pieces that you plan to unravel afterwards. Or use buttonhole cast-on to knit for your enemies (if you are so saintly a soul as to knit for your enemies).

Longtailed or Thumb Cast-On

As I've already stated, longtailed cast-on is the undisputed best for a stretchy edge. If you're making socks, mittens or a sweater, you should start with a longtailed cast-on. You owe it to yourself to learn to do it, even though... you knew there was a catch coming, didn't you?... getting started is a little more complicated than it is for the other cast-ons.

Longtailed cast-on gets its name from the fact that you need to start it off with a long tail. More to the point, you need a tail of the right length, and that length will vary depending upon how many stitches you want to cast on. If you give yourself too short a tail, you'll run out and will be a most unhappy knitter when you have to unravel all your cast-on stitches and start over again.

What to do? The average knitting book would have you calculate the necessary length. I can't remember what the calculation is, and anyway it will vary depending on needle size and yarn gauge. But it doesn't matter. Screw all that. There's a much better way to determine the required length of your tail and it involves no calculating or measuring. It's a method I've developed myself and it's never failed me.

Determining Tail Length

Step 1

Hold up your needle in your left hand. Let a length of yarn hang past it, say six inches. You want to start off with some excess so you'll have a margin for error.

Step 2

Wrap the yarn around the needle, counting the wraps as you go.

If you run out of needle, squish the yarn over to the far end of the needle to give yourself more space.

Keep wrapping until you have counted as many wraps as you need stitches. (If you need ten stitches, wrap the yarn ten times.)

Step 3

Firmly grasp the yarn in front of the wraps between thumb and forefinger and let go of the needle. Let all the wraps unroll until the needle falls out. You now hold the correct length of tail.

The Actual Cast-On

Step 1

Don't let go of that yarn! The spot you're holding on to is the spot where your first stitch needs to go. Tie a slip-knot in that spot (as shown above), slide the needle through the loop and tighten.

Step 2

Arrange the yarn so that the long tail is to your right and the ball of yarn is to your left. Hold the needle in your right hand. Take the yarn leading to the ball and wrap it around your left thumb counterclockwise. The speedy way to do this is to hold the yarn in your left fingers and bring your thumb down upon it from the top, then swish your thumb around counterclockwise to wind up the yarn. (This is the reason that the other name for this cast-on is thumb, in case you haven't figured that out by now.)

Step 3

This part is similar to Step 2 of the buttonhole cast-on, only with a thumb instead of a finger. Insert the knitting needle into the stitch in the same direction as the thumb. But here's where it varies from the buttonhole cast-on: don't slide your thumb out of the loop. Keep it there.

Step 4

Transfer the needle from right hand to left hand, pick up the long tail in your right hand and wrap it over the top of the needle.

Then use your thumb to pull the thumb loop over the tip of the needle.

Pull on both loose ends of yarn until the stitch tightens.

See how it works? The loop from the long tail makes the stitch, and the loop from the thumb holds that stitch in place around the bottom. That's what makes this cast-on stretchy.

Repeat Steps 2 to 4 until you have the required number of stitches.

You can see that this cast-on requires more dexterity than the other two, what with handling two lengths of yarn and passing the needle back and forth between hands. But with a little practice, you'll fly along and this cast-on will be just as much fun as buttonhole cast-on, only it will be much more fun to knit on because your stitches won't keep shrinking on you. And your cuffs will look and feel fabulous.

More Esoteric Cast-Ons

The three cast-ons I have shown you here will serve you well for a lifetime of knitting, but if you care to experiment, there are others to try. In the same way that buttonhole cast-ons are for buttonholes, cable cast-ons are for cable knits and for adding stitches to knitting pieces in progress, and longtailed cast-ons are for stretchy ribbed edges, the more unusual cast-ons were created with specific knitting situations in mind.

Double-Knit Cast-On

Double-knitting is a technique whereby every even stitch becomes part of the front of the fabric and every odd stitch becomes part of the back of the fabric. The result is a fabric that's double thickness, and you need twice as many stitches to achieve the same width. Frankly, I'm not sure what double-knitting is good for and why it exists, but it does, and so there's a special cast-on for it. You don't have to use it--other types of cast-on will work for double-knitting--but it has a peculiar advantage.

Double-knit cast-on, like longtail cast-on, requires a long tail, so do the three steps given in Deterining Tail Length. Then, instead of making a slip knot, fold the yarn in half at the point where you gripped it between your thumb and index finger. Now you're ready to begin.

Step 1

Hold the needle in your right hand and the folded yarn in your left, and slip the point of the needle into the fold from underneath.

Step 2

From above, slip your index finger and thumb into the fold and open it up. You will need to hold onto the yarn with your remaining fingers. Like longtail, this cast-on takes dexterity.

This is where things get complicated, so from now on, the yarn held taut by your index finger will be called "the far yarn" and the yarn held taut by your thumb will be called "the near yarn."

Step 3

Tip the needle away from you and bend it around the far yarn. Then tip the needle towards you and bend it around the near yarn. Finally, bring the needle under the far yarn. You now have two stitches on the needle.

Step 4

Tip the needle forward over the near yarn and wrap under it. Tip the needle back over the far yarn and wrap over it as well, then duck the tip under the near yarn. You now have three stitches on the needle.

Keep alternating Steps 3 and 4 until you have enough stitches (an even number, which means you will end on Step 3, not on Step 4).

Complicated enough for you? Well, yes, but after you've done a few of these, you'll see that the alternating stitches face in different directions. That makes the odd stitches appropriate for the front of the fabric, and the even stitches appropriate for the back. It really is a cast-on you'd only want to use for double-knitting, and maybe not even then.

I got this cast-on from the Spring 2003 issue of Knitter's Magazine, the greatest knitting magazine in the known universe. Look for it on your local newsstand. If your local newsstand doesn't carry it, instead seeing fit to fill its knitting section only with more pedestrian offerings such as Vogue Knitting, tell them they suck.

That's all I have to teach you about casting on for now. Let me know what you thought of my first instructional blog post by leaving a comment. Thanks.

Recipe: Maritime Bean Dip (and bonus Pizza)

Jacob's cattle, soldier and yellow eye are three varieties of bean that are commonly grown in the Maritimes of Canada. If you buy one of these types of beans at the supermarket, it will in all likelihood come with a recipe on the bag, a recipe that never varies. It is Molasses Baked Beans. It is always, always Molasses Baked Beans, as if no Maritimer has ever done anything else with a bean.

That seems a shame to me, not to mention boring, so I have taken it upon myself to provide the bean-buying world with other things to do with a bag of yellow eye or soldier or Jacob's cattle beans, starting with this tasty bean dip that may, if you are so inclined, be made entirely with Maritime-grown ingredients.

The Dip

Ingredients:

• 1 cup yellow eye, soldier or Jacob's cattle beans
• 1 or 2 cloves garlic
• 2 tsp. apple cider vinegar
• 1 tsp. salt
• Ground black pepper, to taste

Soak the beans 4 to 6 hours or overnight in 3 cups of water. If you're not good at advance planning, you can use the quick-soak method: bring water and beans to a boil, cover, turn off heat and let sit for an hour.

Whichever soaking method you use, once the soaking is complete, bring the beans to a boil, reduce heat, cover and let simmer until soft--from 30 minutes to an hour.

Drain beans, place in a bowl and mash. (If you're feeling lazy or have arthritis, use a blender or food processor.) Mince or press garlic and add to mashed beans. (For extra points, use garlic grown in the Maritimes. We have many fine organic farmers ready to supply you. Points will be deducted for garlic that comes from China.) Add cider vinegar, preferably made in the Maritimes. I use Boates vinegar from Nova Scotia. (You can substitute lemon juice, but do note that lemons don't grow this far north. Points will be deducted if your lemons come from Argentina.) Add remaining ingredients. Go to the head of the class if your peppercorns were also grown in the Maritimes. I have yet to come across local pepper, but I know it must exist. I've seen pepper grown in Quebec, and that's the same climate.

Mix well. Taste and adjust seasonings. Yummy, right? And you can't spread molasses baked beans on a cracker.

If you want to get fancy, you can use this bean dip in a pizza. Here goes.

The Pizza

Ingredients:

• Pizza dough, enough for 12-inch pie (to make your own, see recipe below)
• 1 recipe Maritime Bean Dip
• A few handfuls of spinach or other leafy green vegetable (precision is not vital here)
• 1 cup grated cheese

Preheat oven to 450 degrees, 400 if you have a black pizza pan. Oil a 12-inch pan and flatten the pizza dough until it fits the pan; feel free to get fancy and work it between your hands in midair like the pros. It's not that hard, though you toss it into the air at your own risk. Place in pan.

It's not absolutely necessary, but if you want to ensure as crispy a crust as possible, bake the untopped dough for 8 minutes. Spread the bean dip over the dough.

If you are using spinach, wash, spin dry and slice up. You don't need to cook it. If you're using a tougher vegetable like kale or cabbage, you will probably want to sauté it a little first. Sprinkle the vegetable on top of the bean dip.

Top with the grated cheese. As always, extra points for cheese made in the Maritimes; you might want to try some of that asiago that they sell at Aura Foods in Fredericton.

Pop in the oven and bake for 15 to 20 minutes.

Pizza Dough

There are probably a lot of people who have never made their own pizza dough and would be amazed to discover that such an option is open to them. That's a pity, for although it takes time and planning, it's not hard, and kneading the dough is fun and good for stress release.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 tsp. dry yeast
• 3/4 cup warm water
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 cups flour, preferably whole grain
• 1 tbsp. oil

Dissolve the yeast in 1/4 cup of the water and let sit 10 minutes. Here's a tip: buy yeast by the jar instead of in those silly little packets that come in strips. The packets may be convenient (it's just sooo hard to use a measuring spoon after all) but they're much more expensive, and if you do any amount of baking you're just wasting your money. Plus they constitute wasteful packaging and produce more garbage. Even if you don't do that much baking, jarred yeast will keep a long time if you store it in the fridge.

While the yeast is doing its thing, mix together the flour and salt. When the yeast is done, add the yeast mixture to the flour along with the remaining 1/2 cup of warm water and the oil. (I have a confession to make: I use olive oil. If I knew of any local oil appropriate to the task, I would try it instead. Actually, I'm not aware of any cooking oil being made in the Maritimes.)

Mix, gather into a ball and knead until smooth. If you knead dough frequently, you will get to know the feel of sufficiently-kneaded dough. It is a satisfying moment.

Oil a bowl, stick the ball of dough into it and turn once to oil the ball on both sides. Cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise for an hour in a warm place. If you're using white flour you can expect the dough to double, but with whole grain flour the rise is slightly less. No worries; it will still be delicious.

The Prorogued Blog

I think I have probably followed the pattern of many a new blogger. When I started out, I tried to put up something new at least a couple of times a week, mostly because the author of Blogging for Dummies said I should. That didn't last long, especially when the posts began to get longer. Multiple postings per week may work well for short posts, but not so much when each post is at least 2,000 words long and takes several hours to research and write.

But I did maintain a steady if plodding pace for a while. However, life has a way of intruding sometimes. In my case, I went into therapy and recovered memories of being molested by my grandfather. That kind of thing can throw you into a tailspin. It's nice to know, finally, why you're plagued with chronic pain and other problems of mysterious origin, but the revelation is a distracting one, to say the least. At times like this, investing a lot of time in a blog that makes you zero money falls to the bottom of your priority list.

Still, even with a good excuse, it was disconcerting to realize I'd let more than a month go by without updating my blog. This happens to many a well-intentioned beginning blogger, and the proof can be found in the apology-ridden blog posts that abound all over the Internet. Apologizing and explaining is an option, but not the most dignified one. Have we done so badly, after all? At least we haven't abandoned our blogs. Abandoned blogs are another thing you can find all over the Internet.

What to do, then? Simply slap up a new post, make no remark about the large gap, and proceed as if nothing happened? That was an option. But then I realized that I could take inspiration from an unexpected source.

Nobody knows the value of not apologizing like Stephen Harper. A demagogue can't apologize--it would be tantamount to admitting imperfection. You can't have that. Such an admission would hamper his ability to bully his lackeys. So when such a demagogue faced with a pesky opposition that won't stop going on about the multiple memos he ignored concerning the torture of Afghan detainees, what does he do? Especially when the knee-jerk counter-attacks are starting to sound tired and contrived?

Why, he prorogues Parliament. He got away with it before, why not a second time? So what if 36 bills, representing incalculable hours of work and therefore tax dollars, get flushed down the toilet? He places much more value than that on his own hothouse-flower ego.

After I got back from the protest rally, I realized this could work for me too. I don't want to apologize either. I don't happen to have a perfectly pliant and obedient governor general to sign all my forms without question, but that's OK because this blog is entirely under my control. I have absolute power over my own blog. I already have the autocracy Harper would like and is working towards.

I therefore announce that I am retroactively proroguing my blog, from the date of my last post (Remembrance Day) to the present. That's right, I even went back in time to prorogue! Eat your heart out, Harper. (Or did you already? Maybe that's where it went.)

There are differences, of course. One might argue that the need to apologize for not updating one's blog is negligible to nonexistent, given that it's not a true responsibility but just for fun, and one's failure to do it hurts nobody. The same cannot be said for letting people get tortured. For that matter, a prorogued blog doesn't have the national impact and expense of a prorogued Parliament. It doesn't cost millions of dollars and waste everyone's time. It's not a show of disrespect towards an entire nation.

I'm glad I don't have that level of responsibility. That would be burdensome indeed. But then, someone who runs for Prime Minister has some idea of what he's getting into. If he should find he doesn't want to do the job he's being paid a great deal to do, he should step down, forthwith, and let someone else, someone more willing and able, take over.

A Remembrance Day call for a change to army culture

Remembrance Day is a day to think about war, and I have been, although not in the way pop culture seems to encourage these days. I do not fetishize war or worship soldiers as heroes. When yet another young man (or woman, but usually man) comes home in a flag-draped casket, it doesn't make my heart swell with patriotic pride. Quite the opposite, if anything.

What I was thinking about was Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Soldiers lucky enough to return alive often suffer from it. There is growing recognition of this problem, but the focus tends to be on getting soldiers treatment once they get back home. And that shouldn't surprise anyone. The army is a well-honed system that was created to do one thing only: maximize kills. An important part of this is desensitization. Soldiers are trained to see the enemy, whoever that may be at a given time, as less than human. Disregarding the humanity of the enemy means discarding some of one's own humanity. This is inevitable. One can't become desensitized in one area and remain sensitive in others. Therefore, the army is a culture where nobody is allowed to have feelings.

This produces an efficient army, an array of killing machines. It also produces an environment where PTSD becomes entrenched. After all, a soldier who has suffered through a traumatic experience is not free to talk it over and have a good cry. He has to pretend to be strong, "masculine" and unaffected. The feelings that cannot be expressed have but one place to go: into the body, where they manifest as physical problems, behaviour disorders, flashbacks and nightmares.

Rather than concentrating entirely on dealing with the damage once the soldier has come home and the disorder has had time to become well-established, wouldn't it be nice if some measures were taken to prevent PTSD while the soldiers are still in the field?

Of course, when you're at war, there's no way to prevent traumatic events from occurring. What could be prevented is the blocking of expression. If, following a traumatic event, soldiers were free to express themselves as needed--not only with therapists but with each other--there might be less occurrence or severity of PTSD.

Clearly, this would take a major change to army culture, if not to our culture as a whole. I say it's high time for such a change. We haven't had an appreciable and permanent change in our cultural attitudes towards war since the days of the Roman empire. All we've done is come up with better chemicals and machinery for wreaking mayhem. Not much of an accomplishment.

So I say, let's start changing culture, including army culture. The time is late and the need is desperate. And if it leads to a loss of killing efficiency, so be it. There's something worse than not being stronger than everybody else, and that's being stronger than everybody else, at such a cost. Death may well be preferable.

Links of Interest

Broken Heroes

This documentary by the CBC News show The Fifth Estate looks at three soldiers recently returned from Afghanistan and suffering from PTSD. You can watch the entire documentary online, see clips of each soldier's interview, or read transcripts of all three interviews.

Operational Stress Injury Social Support (OSISS)

A support network founded by Lt.-Col. Stéphane Grenier, one of the soldiers interviewed in Broken Heroes.