Consensus

To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.

Margaret Thatcher

Devil's Advocate

Interesting web site. This site makes "simple" issues into much more complicated ones. It asks you questions on hot political topics such as NAFTA and off shore oil drilling then presents up to 4 articles they've written telling you why your view is wrong (no matter whether you are for or against the item listed they've written articles showing the opposite view.)

http://www.kqed.org/w/youdecide/

Nerd Handbook

It'd be funny if if weren't so true.

http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2007/11/11/the_nerd_handbook.html

Multi-tasking quote

Multitasking is the art of distracting yourself from two things you’d rather not be doing by doing them simultaneously.

comment by Eideteker in this Metafilter thread on multitasking:
and then stolen by me from from the 43 Folders site.

Non Lincoln Quote

This quote is often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, including in a former president's speech. It wasn't written by Lincoln, but its still good writing.

http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/cannot.htm

You cannot bring prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
You cannot further brotherhood of men by inciting class hatred.
You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

GI Joe

more song chart memes

Weebles at Graphjam

more song chart memes

Undelete Utilities

I helped recover some lost files this weekend for some friends.

• A DVD-R Disk - Corrupted as additional files where added to it.
• The files where being copied from a USB Pen drive - it also was corrupted
• The original files where cut and paste onto the pen drive, so they were in effect "deleted" from the source drive

These where the utilities which seemed to work best.

Photorec for getting to the Pen Drive Contents - Free (I possibly could have just ran a check disk in windows initially, but I wanted to start with some specialized software first). No GUI just text based but it worked.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

IsoBuster for getting to the DVD-R Contents - $29 (Very nice software. No other software I tested worked at all for this - free or commercial.)
http://www.isobuster.com/isobuster.php

Recuva - For Recovering Large Numbers of deleted files by directory or file type off of the second hard drive - Free (Other programs didn't let you select the file type, or the folder).
http://www.recuva.com/

We also removed the IDE hard drive from the system where the files had been deleted, put it in a external USB IDE Hard Drive enclosure, so we were not writing/booting off of it. Then I attached it to my laptop computer and ran the recovery software from there. This is quick/easy way to attempt various software recovery techniques without degrading the lost files more.


This is the list of software I was testing with http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/datarecovery.shtml

Modern Thinker's Creed

I can't find a link to the original but this is all over the internet. I heard it quoted from Ravi's talk on "Why I'm not an atheist". In his closing remarks he was quoting an opinion piece in a secular paper which was a satire/sarcastic look at society without a moral foundation (ie this is not a real creed ;-).

Modern Thinker's Creed
Steve Turner, English journalist


Here is the creed for the modern thinker.


We believe in Marx, Freud and Darwin.

We believe everything is okay, as long as you don’t hurt anyone to the best of your definition of hurt and to the best of your knowledge.

We believe in sex before, during and after marriage.

We believe in the therapy of sin.

We believe that adultery is fun.

We believe that sodomy is okay.

We believe that taboos are taboo.

We believe that everything is getting better despite evidence to the contrary.

The evidence must be investigated and you can prove anything with evidence.

We believe there is something in horoscopes, UFO’s, and bent spoons.

Jesus was a good man just like Buddha, Mohammad and ourselves.

He was a good moral teacher, although we think basically his good morals were really bad.

We believe that all religions are the basically the same, at least the ones we read were.

They all believe in love and goodness.

They only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God and salvation.

We believe that after death comes nothing because when you ask the dead what happens they say nothing.

If death is not the end, and if the dead have lied, then it’s compulsively heaven for all except perhaps Hitler, Stalin and Chingis Khan.

We believe in Masters and Johnson.

What is selected is average, what’s average is normal, and what’s normal is good.

We believe in total disarmament.

We believe there are direct links between warfare and bloodshed.

Americans should beat their guns into tractors and the Russians would be sure to follow.

We believe that man is essentially good - it’s only his behavior that lets him down.

This is the fault of society; society’s the fault of conditions; and conditions are the fault of society.

We believe that each man must find the truth that is right for him and reality will adapt accordingly; the universe will readjust and history will alter.

We believe that there is no absolute truth, except the truth that there is no absolute truth.

We believe in the rejection of creeds and the flowering of individual thought.


If Chance be the Father of all flesh, disaster is His rainbow in the sky.
And when you hear: “State of Emergency,” “Sniper Kills Ten,” “Troops on Rampage,” “Youths go Looting,” “Bomb Blasts School,” it is but the sound of man worshipping his maker.

Christian Apologetics

I know several of my friends like "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis and have been listening to the audio version of the book. If you like the philosophical take on Christianity, but are also interested in a more modern (and less dry) style, listen to Ravi Zacharias podcast "Let My People Think"

http://www.rzim.org/radio/

Recent entries in podcast

Why Sit Here Until We Die? (Part 1 of 2) 26:00 1/26/2008 The northern kingdom of Israel was in a dark, desperate situation as they faced a horrible famine and threatening enemies. Even the king had lost hope. But as we'll see today, God is in the business of providing hope when all hope seems lost. And often

Why Sit Here Until We Die? (Part 2 of 2) 26:00 2/2/2008 The northern kingdom of Israel was in a dark, desperate situation as they faced a horrible famine and threatening enemies. Even the king had lost hope. But as we'll see today, God is in the business of providing hope when all hope seems lost. And often

Cultural Relativism & the Emasculation of Truth (Part 1 of 2) 26:00 2/9/2008 Does truth really matter? Does it even make a difference if truth exists or not? The denial of truth is not a new concept. On today's program, Ravi will revisit the question that Pilate asked 2000 years ago, arguing that the answer is vitally important

Cultural Relativism & the Emasculation of Truth (Part 2 of 2) 25:58 2/16/2008 Does truth really matter? Does it even make a difference if truth exists or not? The denial of truth is not a new concept. On today's program, Ravi will revisit the question that Pilate asked 2000 years ago, arguing that the answer is vitally important

Creedal Affirmation in Search of Commitment (Part 1 of 2) 26:00 2/23/2008 Without a doubt, the legitimacy of the message of Jesus Christ hinges on the fact that it is actually true. But how does a Christian communicate this all-important truth to a world that doesn't believe that truth even exists in the first place? Today, R

Creedal Affirmation in Search of Commitment (Part 2 of 2) 26:00 2/29/2008 Without a doubt, the legitimacy of the message of Jesus Christ hinges on the fact that it is actually true. But how does a Christian communicate this all-important truth to a world that doesn't believe that truth even exists in the first place? Today, R

Invested Dignity, Reflective Glory (Part 1 of 2) 26:00 3/8/2008 Circumstances in the world around us sometimes make us wonder if life is just random, with no ultimate point. And yet, there is so much in the world that speaks of a design and a purpose. But what exactly is that purpose? That's our topic this week wit

Invested Dignity, Reflective Glory (Part 2 of 2) 26:00 3/15/2008 Circumstances in the world around us sometimes make us wonder if life is just random, with no ultimate point. And yet, there is so much in the world that speaks of a design and a purpose. But what exactly is that purpose? That's our topic this week wit
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Absolute Truth in Relative Terms II (Part 1 of 2) 26:00 3/22/2008 We all face temptation. It's a part of living as a human being, and amazingly, Jesus was no exception. So what were the primary temptations that Jesus faced? How did Jesus respond to these temptations? What can we learn from His temptation experience in t

Absolute Truth in Relative Terms II (Part 2 of 2) 26:00 3/29/2008 We all face temptation. It's a part of living as a human being, and amazingly, Jesus was no exception. So what were the primary temptations that Jesus faced? How did Jesus respond to these temptations? What can we learn from His temptation experience in t

Though the Fig Tree Does Not Bud (Part 2 of 2) 26:00 1/19/2008 The issue of violence -- where does it fit within a Christian worldview? What does the existence of violence tell us about the world? What does God himself think about violence? Well, we're not the first ones to be asking these questions. The prophet

Though the Fig Tree Does Not Bud (Part 1 of 2) 26:00 1/12/2008 The issue of violence -- where does it fit within a Christian worldview? What does the existence of violence tell us about the world? What does God himself think about violence? Well, we're not the first ones to be asking these questions. The prophet

Raised to Run (Part 2 of 2) 25:59 1/5/2008 On our broadcast today, we'll look at the life of Jacob to see the power that childhood experiences have on the course of our lives, and how we find restoration in spite of the past. Ravi reminds us that with all of the stuff that our children receive fr

Amish Country

My dad took this picture. If you look closely you can see the web URL and phone number on the sign.

The equation cracked me up the most.

Not Funny But Very True

Interesting Bible Study Topics

This is a list of Bible Study topics I'd like to learn and possibly teach. This is going to be a blog entry I continually update.

1. How to Study the Bible - I think there is a need for Christians to know how to use the Bible as a resource to solving many of their day to day problems. How to find what they are looking for, how to accurately research a topic, and how not to take verses of of context. A bible study like this would be very useful if it had homework, where each participant chose a topic and came back to lead it. If they felt unconfortable or where new Christians they could work with a more more mature christian to look over their homework before presenting it to the group.
2. Christian Love and Christian responses
3. Self Esteem vs Christian Self Worth
   

Eat whale and save the planet

Funny article.

OSLO (Reuters) - Eat a whale and save the planet, a Norwegian pro-whaling lobby said on Monday of a study showing that harpooning the giant mammals is less damaging to the climate than farming livestock.

"Basically it turns out that the best thing you can do for the planet is to eat whale meat compared to other types of meat," said Rune Froevik of the High North Alliance, which represents the interests of coastal communities in the Arctic.

"Greenhouse gas emissions caused by one meal of beef are the equivalent of eight meals of whale meat," the study said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSEIC37493020080303?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews&rpc=22&sp=true

Sci-fi fan site

Ever wanted to compare the size of the star ship enterprise (NCC 1071-D) to the size of the Death Star from Star wars? Me neither. But just in case this site has the dimensions for a huge number of sci-fi ships.

http://www.merzo.net/

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Answers in Genesis (answersingenesis.org) got a preview of Ben Stein's new movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" on intelligent design to be released on April 18, and they loved it!

After seeing the movie, I urge all people NOT to miss it. It is eye-opening, astonishing, exposing, fascinating, entertaining, and intriguing! Ben Stein (presidential speechwriter, commentator, and comedian—and starring as the boring economics teacher in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off) does a masterful job of exposing the overwhelming bias against belief in any intelligent design behind the origin of life on earth, something that is so rife through the scientific academic community.

http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/aroundtheworld/2008/02/20/don%E2%80%99t-miss-the-expelled-movie/

Movie Site: http://www.expelledthemovie.com/

VOIP - Cheap LIMITED Phone Service

I was looking for cheap local phone service with no monthly fees, only pay based on usage, and to use a home phone, not a computer for access. This is a different then Vontage which is relatively low monthly fees and unlimited usage. The reason for this is that I prefer to use a cell phone for most calls but want to have a home phone as well. The service I chose was gizmo (http://www.gizmoproject.com/) service which charges $0.019 per minute calls to normal phones, no monthly fees, prepaid. The only "catch" is that I have to add to the pre-paid accounts in minimum increments of $10 and which expire after 6 months if I don't use them. I looked at Skype, but it doesn't do true VOIP so if you want to use their service without a computer you have to buy an expensive proprietary Skype phone, not my normal phone. I purchased an ATA, an analog telephone adapter so I can still use my normal phone. Plus, so I didn't have to purchase a phone number from the gizmoproject (for $3 a month), I instead use the Grandcentral service (http://www.grandcentral.com/) from Google which give a user a free access number which calls all of your phone numbers, cell phone, home, work, and even your GIZMO account. So my setup looks like this

Outgoing calls

Home phone -> ATA (Grandstream HT488 Adapter) -> Comcast Internet -> Gizmo Project -> Normal Phone Network -> End Phone number

Incoming calls

End user caller -> Normal Phone Network -> Google GrandCentral Service -> Gizmo project -> Comcast Internet -> ATA (Grandstream HT488 Adapter) -> Normal Phone

I'm going to use this for a few days and then write more about my experiences.

Fixing a NSLU2

I'm running an NSLU2 server with the default linksys firmware. It serves up a USB hard drive to my home network. It was failing sending small files in Windows with the message "The Network name was no longer available". I just disabled UPnP support on the NSLU2 and then file transfers starting working. I found this tip here http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/FAQ/DroppingConnections.

Quick install CMS

Quickly install most cms stacks in less then 5 minutes for testing. I installed drupal in < 5 minutes on my windows laptop for playing. I have no idea if their stacks are production worthy or even upgradeable but for testing an a new app its really nice. Most installers are for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.

http://bitnami.org/stacks

* Infrastructure
* LAMPStack
* MAMPStack
* RubyStack
* WAMPStack
* Blog
* Roller
* WordPress
* Bug-Tracking
* Mantis
* Redmine
* Trac
* CMS
* Alfresco
* Drupal
* Joomla
* KnowledgeTree
* ECM
* Alfresco
* KnowledgeTree
* Forum
* phpBB
* Poll Management
* Opina
* Portal Server
* Liferay
* Wiki
* DokuWiki
* MediaWiki
* eLearning
* Moodle

Putting it all together - Fun with web 2.0

This is a re-post of mine from here http://www.geekbrownbag.com/blog/topher/2008/jan/12/putting-it-all-together-fun-web-2-0


For a dynamic site I'd want it to be as easy as possible to manage data from multiple sources, and manage content with a team of people but never actually have to go to the site to manage content and I want to use the tools I already use on a day to day basis namely google reader, blogger, google calendar, and possibly google documents and flickr (although I don't use flickr currently). Plus for brownie points I don't want to have create special accounts on those sites, I want to use my existing accounts just use labels on the content specifying the topic.

If we did this on geekbrownbag I wouldn't have repost this same blog entry both here and on my own website so both communities can read it. I'd just put a label on the post for geekbrownbag, and then bang it would be both places.

Here are some tricks I've learned

Blogger allows label specific RSS Feeds

http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=53336&topic=12455

So to subscribe to my RSS specific feed from my normal blog a cms could be subscribed to

http://eltopher.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/geekbrownbag

Goggle reader allows re-feeding label specific RSS items

http://www.google.com/support/reader/bin/answer.py?answer=70656&query=pu...

Any interesting article, I could just tag it geekbrownbag and it would instantly show up on the main page.

Plus if the CMS software can't handle multiple RSS Feeds for one category like the main page not a problem seed the feeds through a feed aggregator which sends them out as one combined rss feed.

Using software called reblog and its re-feed component
http://reblog.org/refeed/README.html

Calendar Integration

Google calendar allows multiple authors
http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=36598&ctx=si...

Google calendars can be embedded into a website
http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=41207

Dynamic Sites

I'm looking for a good CMS software package which can do the following

1. Display multiple RSS Feeds into multiple parts of the page
2. Display images Flickr
3. Uses *nix but not java so probably PHP, Perl, Ruby, etc

So far Drupal, wordpress, and Joomla seem to be the main ones I've seen on the web.

I'm also interested in rss feed aggretators which can display a single section with feeds from multiple sources. I don't know if CMS's can do this or if I I need to find a seperate rss feed aggregator like refeed at http://www.reblog.org/refeed/README.html which can aggregate multiple feeds into one, optionally allowing moderation and selection of specific posts to refeed.