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djotaku's twitter feed
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- http://www.gnu.org/fry/
- Clinton Supporters: Are you really such sore losers that you're prepared to screw us all over for four years just because you lost?
- More Christian Tech Goodness: http://tinyurl.com/6c8587
- When I was a kid, I played some corny Biblical video games. Now this comes out: http://tinyurl.com/5mxczl Will it sell?
- From now on all LPGA players must pass an oral english test. Who cares if you speak english if you can swing a stick at a small white ball?
- I thought my blog looked a little weird and then I remembered that I had ad blocker turned on and my google ad was therefore missing.
- Foobar2000 the strangely named audio player with the neat features
- I'm annoyed that my Civ 4 BTS hasn't been auto-updating. Just had to download over 300 MB of patches just to play Fall from Heaven 2.
- @ASPwizer: Nothing wrong with you, Honda Elements are the cars that winners drive. q;o)
- Also, sharing: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericsbinaryworld/sets/72157606917571613/
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Apr
30
Subversive Kid’s Tv Shows
Category: tv | 
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I read a book a few years ago called “Don’t Tell the Grownups” about how some authors hid their dangerous messages in the form of children’s book. As I was listening to some music from the cartoon Animaniacs, I also heard some hidden messages that the kids might not quite understand. For example, in a song where the Warner Brothers sing the names of the US Presidents, they end the song with, “…the one in charge is plain to see, it’s Clinton - first name Hilary.” So even in this kid’s show we see the joke that Hilary is in charge of the White House instead of Bill Clinton. This is pretty mild, but even more contentious is where Yakko sings all of the countries in the world. He mentions Taiwan as one of the countries. As we all know, we’re supposed to pretend that Taiwan is part of China when, for all intents and purposes, it is its own country in all but name. But here we are training kids that it is its own country - very interesting!
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Apr
29
How bad are video games really?
Category: News, Video Games | Leave a Comment
Wired Magazine’s April 2006 issue explored this premise in a very unique way. Instead of saying that we still don’t have conclusive evidence that video games do any damage (and in fact there is some that they are helpful in some instances) they mentioned that the battle between older adults and younger adults/kids is age-old. Below are the quotes they used in their article.
Novels
“The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth; and prevented others from improving their minds in useful knowledge. Parents take care to feed their children with wholesome diet; and yet how unconcerned about the provision for the mind, whether they are furnished with salutary food, or with trash, chaff, or poison?” - Reverend Enos Hitchcock, Momoirs of the Bloomsegrove Family, 1790
(hilarious to me since nowadays the adults will tell you to “go read a book”)
The Waltz
“The indecent foreign dance called the Waltz was introduced…at the English Court on Friday last…It is quite sufficient to cast one’s eyes on the voluptuous intertwining of limbs, and close compressure of the bodies…to see that it is far indeed removed form the modest reserve which has hitherto been considered distinctive of English females. So long as this obscene display was confined to protitues and adulteresses, we did not think it deserving of notice; but now that it is…forced on the respectable classes of society by the evil example of their superiors, we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion.” - The Times of London, 1816
(makes you think about booty dancing in another way, eh?)
Movies
“This new form of entertainment has gone far to blast maidenhoood…Depraved adults with candies and pennies beguile children with the inevitable result. The Society has prosecuted many for leading girls astray through these picture shows, but GOD alone knows how many are leading dissolute lives begun at the ‘moving pictures’.” - The Annual Report of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 1909
(all this before a scandal was caused in the 40s by the utterance of the word “damn”)
The Telephone
“Does the telephone make men more active or more lazy? DOes [it] break up home life and the old practice of visiting friends?” - Survey conducted by the Knights of Columbus, 1926
(What would they have thought of IM?)
Comic Books
“Many adults think that the crimes described in comic books are so far removed from the child’s life that for children they are merely something imaginative or fantastic. But we have found this to be a great error. Comic books and life are connected. A bank robbery is easily translated inot the rifling of a candy store. Delinquencies formerly restricted to adults are increasingly committed by young people and children…All child drug addicts, and all children drawn into the narcotics traffic as messengers, with whom we have had contact, were inveterate comic book readers…This kind of thing is not a good mental nourrishment for children!” - Fredric Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 1954
(Like all good statistics, Wertham chooses to ignore what contradicts him. The people he was interviewing were avid comic book readers as a matter of course - ALL kids back in the 20s and 30s were! So why didn’t he mention comic book readers who grew up to be CEOs and other productive members of society?)
Rock and Roll
“The effect of rock and roll on young people is to turn them into devil worshippers; to stimulate self-expression through sex; to provoke lawlessness; imparir nervous stability and destroy the sanctity of marriage. It is an evil influence on the youth of our country.” - Minister Albert Carter, 1956
(All this because of Elvis? I think these things were already underway - some music from the 1920s is pretty dirty…)
Videogames
“The disturbing material in Grand Theft Auto and other games like it is stealing the innocence of our children and it’s making the difficult job of being a parent even harder…I believe the ability of our children to access pornographic and outrageiously violent material on video games reated for adults is spiraling out of control.” - US Senator Hilary Clinton, 2005
(She, like so many others, continue to skirt the issue! These games are rated mature, if the parents don’t buy it, where will the kids get it from? Other friends? They can also access drugs and alcohol that way, nothing special about video games. From the rental store? Smack them with fines like we do when people sell liquor to minors!)
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Apr
28
More Tai Shan
Category: Photography | Leave a Comment
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Apr
27
Today’s Favorite
Category: Photography | Leave a Comment
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Apr
26
Tai Shan
Category: Photography | Leave a Comment
When I found out a baby panda had been born at the National Zoo, I wanted to see him as soon as he was available. Unfortunately, the tickets to see him sold out right away. Now, nine months later, the tickets are largely an unnecessary formality. However, I didn’t know that when Danielle and I woke up at 5 am last Sunday to get a glimpse of Tai Shan. I had read that before 0830 tickets were not necessary to see the Giant Pandas, so I got all my gear ready on Saturday night and set my alarm for 0500. Then we went to go see Tai Shan. I found a group of photographers who all visit at least once a week (some every other day) to see what antics little Tai Shan was up to. He’s currently weaning, so he’s learned that bamboo goes in his mouth, but he still doesn’t eat it as voraciously as his parents. I had no idea I would find him so amusing! I ended up taken nearly 150 pictures of him. In raw mode, that cost me nearly 1.5 GB of space! Below are some of my favorite pictures from that day and I’ll be adding more soon.
Tian Tian, Tai Shan’s dad, who was always napping or eating.
And Tai Shan and mother Mei Xiang
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Apr
21
Lego Difference Engine
Category: Computers, Geek Love | Leave a Comment
Someone built a difference engine - the first computer ever designed by Charles Babbage - out of Legos. The difference engine is more of a calculator than a computer in that you can’t load multiple programs on it, but it was still extremely revolutionary for its time. In fact, it was only designed on paper and wasn’t actually built until the 1990s!
Here’s the link to the Lego Difference Engine…. raw geekage at its best!
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Apr
19
If you haven’t done so already, install xen by typing
yum install xen
This will install xen as well as taking care of any needed dependencies. Now you need the xen-enabled kernel so type
yum install kernel-xen0
(That’s a zero there) While we’re waiting for that to install, it’s time to learn some Xen terminology. Xen causes all operating systems to run virtualized. This is why we need the xen kernel. It’s also why Xen is not available on Windows XP- you can’t virtualize an OS that doesn’t expect to be virtualized. However, there is still a primary OS and then a series of guest OSes, depending upon how many OSes you want to run and how much RAM you have. The primary OS is domain 0 and is referred to as dom0 online and pretty much everywhere I’ve read about Xen. All guest OSes are called domU. The first one is called dom0 because programmers start counting with 0. The guests are called domU because U stands for unpriveledged. Unpriviledged means they can’t reboot the physical computer and other such restrictions. Done? Good!
Now go to a terminal, become root, and type
less /boot/grub/grub.conf
to make sure an entry has been added for the Xen kernel. If you haven’t done too much mucking about in grub, default shoud be equal to one. To boot the xen kernel by default, change default so that it now equals 0. Now reboot to make sure this happens correctly. See you on the other side of the reboot!
Did you see all of the Xen messages upon boot? Good! You have that all set up correctly! Did it become a black screen that required you to hard reboot? No problem! Let’s change it to runlevel 3, as reccomended.
When GRUB comes up, hit enter to pick your kernel. Highlight the Xen kernel and hit e. Then select the second line from the bottom and hit e to edit that one. Get rid of rhgb and quiet at the end and put the number 3. Then hit b to boot. Things seem to run more smoothly on my screen too! (Before some of the boot text was colliding) This only changes it this one time, unfortunately, it seems to require being a permanent change, so you will have to edit grub.conf, as we did at the beginning.
At the login prompt login, su to root and type gdm to start up as usual. We just have one more thing to install before we get to the final step of setting up our first guest. This time
yum install vnc
Which installs vncviewer - the program used to graphically view your guest OSes. Now let’s make sure that Xen is properly running by typing, as root:
xm list
This should roughly say:
Name ID Mem(MiB) VCPUs State Time(s)
Domain-0 0 463 1 r—– 137.6
Alright! One of the hardest parts is over! Now, I don’t know how to install another flavor (distro) of Linux as the guest, although I’m 99% sure it’s possible. It’s just that all the How-Tos on the net seem to focus with Fedora users wanting Fedora domUs and Debian users wanting Debian domUs. Once I figure out an easy way to get another OS in there, I’ll let my readers know. So, on to installing another Fedora as a domU!
As root type
/usr/sbin/xenguest-install.py
and you get a few questions!
What is the name of your virtual machine? this is the name that will appear when you type xm list, so try to make it descriptive. In other words, if this virtual machine will be an internet server, name it so. If it is an email server, name it so.
How much RAM should be allocated? Red Hat reccomends at least 256 for their distros. It all depends on whether you want GUIs or not, but it is painful to attempt a GUI install with less than 256.
What would you like to use as the disk path? Where in your computer do you want the domU and what do you want the filename to be called? Try something like /home/myusername/nameIchoseinfirstquestion
How large would you like the disk to be? How big do you want the domU to think its hard drive is? At this point I don’t know if this can be resized, so be as generous as you can afford to be.
What is the install location? Where can Fedora find the files to install itself? So look online and find such a place - I found :
http://ftp.ale.org/mirrors/fedora/linux/core/5/i386/os/
Then I got an error about balloons! You just need to reduce the RAM your dom0 is taking. Issue the command:
xm mem-set 0 256
Now to continue the installation, type:
xm create -c nameofdomU
I got a boot loader error, which may result from the install being on the net. So I tried the creation step again to see if that would help. Never figured out why that didn’t work. After trying again from scratch it worked. I know there is a way to use Anaconda for the installation, but mine just kicked into an ncurses installation. Possibly, this is because of the source I am using, although I’m not sure. Oh, this was just to setup networking on the domU. This part is going extremely slow, I would recommending using wget to mirror an installation tree to your network for faster access.
Well, that’s where I have to stop for now. I’ve been doing this on a VMware image of Fedora so as not to disturb my working machine. However, there appear to be problems with the Xen image being able to access the net through VMWare and the install must be FTP, HTTP, or NFS. If there’s a way to install via CD, I haven’t found it yet. I’ll write up a part two once I figure out the next steps.
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Apr
18
He is one of my favorite comedians so I have translated two of his jokes for you today. Enjoy!
A woman walks into a pet store and tells the man at the counter, “I would like to buy your canary which sings most beautifully.”
So the man at the counter comes back with a bird and tells her, “this bird sings more beautifully than any other canary. It sings so beautifully that I cannot sell it for less than $1500.” She thought this was a lot, but for a bird that sang that well, she was willing to pay the price.
A week later the woman returns, angry. “You were very dishonest with me!” She tells the shop keeper, “I paid a lot of money for that bird and it only has one leg!”
To which the shop keeper replied, “Make up your mind woman, do you want it to sing or dance?”
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A man was on his deathbed and called for his best friend to come to see him before he died. His voice was very hoarse and his friend had to strain to hear him as he began, “You have been my friend ever since we were little kids. But now I am on my deathbed and I have a confession to make. You see, I have done a lot of bad things to you. I was the one who told the boss that you were a drug dealer so he would fire you, because I wanted your position. And I must tell you another thing. I was the one who told your wife that you were cheating on her so she would leave you because I was in love with her. And after she left you - I want you to know this - after she left you I was going out with her for two years. And I must also tell you-”
And his friend said, “You don’t have to tell me anything else because I know it all! That’s why I poisoned you, you son of a whore!”
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Apr
13
Jewish Reggae
Category: Music, Religion | Leave a Comment
Christian Rock/Pop music has been around since the 1970s when Larry Norman pioneered the genre. Since then it has become a HUGE market encompassing all areas of music from rock to ska to punk to rap. There is a large popuplation of Jews in the US, so why wouldn’t there be Jewish music? Finally, our country has put enough of our prejudices aside that I heard Matisyahu’s single “King Without a Crown” on the pop radio station here in the Baltimore Area.
I bought his “Live at Stubb’s” CD last night and listened to it for the first time today in the car. It’s an awesome CD. When I heard the second track, “Chop ‘Em Down”, I knew it was about Moses as soon as I heard the word wilderness. Any Christian who has spent his formative years in Sunday school thinks of the Isrealites escaping Pharoah when they hear wilderness. That story is not only well known, but so often used as a metaphor that it’s an automatic association. Well, I thought the lyrics were well suited to the Passover/Easter season, so here they are!
From the forest itself comes the hand for the ax Split this wilderness listen up this ain't where it's at Clear a path so that you could find your way back Chop 'em down, chop 'em down; chop 'em down, chop 'em down Time flies by like clouds passing in the sky lifetimes hear and gone like the blink of an eye March through this desert one-step at a time, march through the desert one step at a time From the forest itself comes the handle for the ax, Drop the staff Moshe rabbainu split the ocean in half, March through the desert this ain't where it's at Chop 'em down, Chop 'em down Patterns engraved not so easily erased, still wandering trying to find your place Playing the game I see pain on your face now a day's the yiddin like children sold as slaves Strange ways running through the maze, strange ways always lost in the desert trying to find to find your place lost in the desert trying to find your place From the forest itself comes the handle for the ax, Drop the staff Moshe rabbainu split the ocean in half, March through the desert this ain't where it's at Chop 'em down, Chop 'em down Joseph descended sold as a slave, thrown into a dungeon cause he wouldn't be swayed Interpreted pharaoh's dreams and Egypt was saved stock piled food for seven years of rain then sold to all the nations when the drought came Joseph rose to power and the yiddin stayed They started to build and success was made Pharos getting worried let's make them pay bound in chains First born was sent down to their graves Moshe was saved and a prince he was raised Hashem spoke to him hears a message to relay Take my Nation from Mitzrayim (Egypt) I see the suffering Hard hearts ego breaks take sparks and make way Trail blaze through the wasteland breaking the chains Last generation just the ruminants March through the desert leaving footprints Peel off the lid this is just plastic, get into it, get into it Heavy hitter stepping solid never quitter jump into the ocean before it split got a jump into it Rip through Egypt rip through it, get into it, 600,000 witnessed it, no you didn't forget In the spiritual desert things are not what they seem snakes camouflaged just fit the scene Put your faith in a mirage it's just a smoke screen The king is sitting on his thrown of glory
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Apr
13
Lent - a quickie
Category: Photography | 1 Comment
I’m not Catholic, but if I were to give something up for Lent, it would have to be my only addiction - flickr!
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