ThinkBlog

Just in time for the holidays! (Well, at least, the post-holiday goof-off time before school and work starts back to full swing.)

Games Knoppix

First off, there’s a new Knoppix bootable CD distribution that’s designed specifically to pack as many games into itself as possible (”Games Knoppix“) [BitTorrent]. That adds up to 700MB of gaming quality for those of you who enjoy liesure time.

For years, the primary complaint from Windows users has been a lack of games for the Linux platform; frankly, most Linux installations outside of the computer hobbyist or geek enthusiast have been in corporate server clusters and webhosting applications. Recently, though, more people are developing games for the platform and there are a few companies developing compatibility layers specifically to run commercial versions of Windows games.

But if you’re not into hardcore diversions (i.e., if you don’t own a copy of Half-Life 2, or at least, didn’t the first day it came out), this could still come in handy for slow days at the office. Knoppix is a bootable version of Linux that runs on a CD, doesn’t install anything to your hard drives, and is fully self-contained. Great for demoing Linux to your boss, coworkers, parents, or anyone else that’s not ready to plunge head-first into a different system. This also means that in a reboot’s time, you can enjoy games–and then reboot again, pop out the disc, and behold!–you are back in your native OS.

ZSNES Emulator Release

The industry standard for Super Nintendo emulators for any operating system, ZSNES has been presumed dead (except for minor Work In Progress code updates) until just recently when the coders made another major (non-beta) release! This version emulates many of the special chips inside the system and game cartridges that were neglected in the last version. Join #zsnes on Freenode (IRC) to see the developers at work. (Check your ROMs with NSRT!)

NES Overclocking

Either way ahead of its time or almost 20 years late, the guy at Epic Gaming has overclocked (artificially sped up the CPU of) a Nintendo Entertainment System (circa 1985 in the USA). He provides a guide to show you how. Enjoy!

From Slashdot:

An anonymous reader writes “Offering it as ’something to play with over the holidays,’ Linus Torvalds released the official 2.6.10 Linux kernel, which he named the ‘Woozy Numbat.’ KernelTrap offers the full details, noting that there have been minimal changes since the last release candidate, 2.6.10-rc3. Linus commented that with 2.6.10 released, now he could ‘get into the Glögg for real’ (a hot mulled wine with spices, red wine, port and brandy). As always, the latest Linux kernel can be downloaded from a kernel.org mirror.” (Here are some recipes, too.)

I look forward to compiling this one; I’ll be posting to the ThinkBlog probably next Saturday about how it works. (I’ll be out of town till the new year, after tonight.) Apparently this works with AMD’s x86_64 chip, so I may try to grab a BitTorrent of SUSE 9.2 Pro 64-bit and recompile this thing immediately. We’ll have to see how the backups go, first, though. In other news, glögg sounds good, and here’s a recipe; someone let me know if it’s worth it since the coldest it gets around here is the teens Fahrenheit around this time of year.

Greetings to you all! I hope you’re having a wonderful Christmas day and that the Lord’s teachings this Christmas season have been illuminated afresh for you.

It helps me to take a few minutes during the Christmas season to regain my focus. I don’t enjoy candy because when you’re done eating it, you’ve gained nothing but empty calories and a slick, sugary taste in your mouth that taints everything else you eat with that overpowering artifice. Sometimes I feel the same way about Christmas: yes, there’s a point to it, but it gets lost behind a fat old man that somehow just won’t die, a saccharine parody of the real man Nicholas of third-century Turkey who has been apotheosized for all the secularists who want an excuse to stimulate themselves and the economy but don’t want to have to bother with the real reason for the season. Are you as exhausted as I am with all the hustle and bustle? At least here in America, the real vacation comes after the so-called holiday.

But all hope for the real meaning is not lost! What is it that we really celebrate on Christmas?
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http://www.mailnet.co.uk/~marc/msl.html

NEdit is my favorite text editor. It’s extremely fast, quite stable, and highly extensible (much like Emacs, only without the kitchen sink, the integrated cabal of code-ninjas, and the five African elephants). This is a collection of extremely useful macros for the text editor, everything from C/C++ programming helps to simple stuff like “join lines.” (That’s the one I was Googling for, incidentally, when I came upon this site.)

As you probably know if you keep up with the IT community much (well, or if you read the New York Times on a regular basis!), from the contributions of 10,000 users, the people at Mozilla.org were able to run a full two-page ad [PDF] in the New York Times on 16 December 2004. This is a huge step in the right direction as to getting the word out that, even on Windows-based platforms, you needn’t deal with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. This is truly a milestone achievement by the good folks at Firefox’s development team, and I’m delighted for what this will mean for encouragement to develop this browser even more.

Interestingly, this probably is what spawned a recent article by Microsoft’s own Peter Torr, whose prime complaint was that all that money could have gone to getting Firefox signed with a valid security certificate (so that you know where you’re downloading this from). Now, despite protestations to the contrary, the guy may have a point, but how big of a deal is this in the scheme of things? He points out that trust isn’t transitive: just because you trust Mozilla.org doesn’t mean you trust a mirror to which it points. But is that true? Why wouldn’t you trust Bob if I trust Bob and you trust me? (Assuming Bob exists and I do in fact trust him. Just ride with it for a minute.) If you can trust my good word, then you can trust whomever I say you can trust, unless you purport to know something I don’t. And what is the end user going to know about a mirror for a program that the primary site doesn’t know? Not likely to be anything, if it’s Mozilla’s team behind it.

Thankfully, after being Slashdotted¹, he has posted a follow-up article answering many of the complaints (at which I left a comment). What do you think? Does not having signed software prevent you from downloading it and running it, assuming virus and adware protection?

[1] Slashdot. v. To have your site inundated with hits all at once in such a flurry that your web host is, at least momentarily, crippled in the same way as a DDoS attack.

[Edit: Linked to my comment at the guy’s blog. Thanks for all the hits!]

http://www.linuxquestions.org/

“Where Linux users come for help.”

With a forum 150 000 members strong and counting, this is the place to come first for help, whether it be hardware or software-related, programming or networking. The folks are friendly (as much as can be expected, with the standard deviation of every so many posts being a little abraisive), and because they’re from all different time zones across the world (and include a wide userbase of geeks who have gone through the obligatory initiation stage and, hence, will be up to answer your questions at all hours of the night).

http://www.icr.org/

The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) is a strong proponent of scientifc creationism, with a large question and answer database, articles on evidence and support for creationist and/or intelligent design viewpoints and education, and more.

http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/history/ath-inc.htm

This work by St. Athanasius (c. 296 - 373), the so-called “Father of Orthodoxy” and a stirring writer of various tracts on the Christian faith, is a beautiful defense of the Christian doctrine of the divine trinity, and contains many jewels in and of itself that Athanasius includes as little “asides.”

Also of note (perhaps primarily, to the student of philosophy or theology) is that the introduction to this translation is penned by none other than the illustrious C. S. Lewis. In the introduction, Lewis encourages young (undergraduate college) students and adults alike not to be afraid of the old texts of philosophy, written by the greats like Plato and others. For, he argues, it’s not until recently that books on philosophy have been written from Academia to Academia to the exclusion of lay people. This was the first text my spiritual mentor had me read, and it’s a remarkably encouraging little bit on Why to read philosophy if your primary misgivings are in your own capacities to understand.

I attended Clemson University’s December 2004 graduation ceremony this past Thursday, and would like to extend my congratulations to all of those who made it. Among them were some old friends and colleagues from as far back as ten years and more (before we ever thought of ourselves as “colleagues,” to be sure!). It was a remarkably bittersweet event, watching those I knew get their baccalaureate diplomas: on the one hand, I felt like I should have been there with them, but on the other hand, I wouldn’t really trade where I am right now, being used as I am in this specific way by the Lord, for anything. Nevertheless, I’m proud of them all, several of whom already have job offers and are moving on up and out.

Here’s to you, ladies & gentlemen, class of ‘04!

The problem was resolved promptly in the early morning after I posted that. Thanks to Jeff for his help. Silly automated scripts that don’t do their jobs.

I’m back in Columbia after being in Greenville for three days of family- and friend-visiting. It was eventful and fun; of particular note, the Greenville Symphony Orchestra put on a holiday performance with guest soprano Nancy Davis Booth and the 80+ member choir of the SC Governor’s School for the Arts. The end was arguably the best part, not because it was the end, but because they sang the Hallelujah Chorus (Handel, can’t go wrong with something from Messiah) and because the last song was a “Christmas Pops Sing-along”—I’m a sucker for Bing’s “White Christmas.”

Have a good weekend, or if you’re just logging on Monday, I hope you’ve had a good weekend.

Having a bit of DNS trouble; those of you coming here via think.stufftoread.com should be able to see this, while thinkblog.org/.us/.info are forwarded to a different address. Will let you know as soon as conditions change.

[EDIT 2006/03/16: Please change your bookmarks, if you haven’t already, to reflect thinkblog.org instead of the old think.stufftoread.com address.]

St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD) wrote in Confessions about his life before being illumined by God, the process in which he came to Christ, and his life thereafter in a unique way: he addresses this autobiographical work to God Himself, and we the voyeurs reap the benefits of “listening in.” A man I highly respect told me to read this almost two years ago, and make notes on it, and get back to him; we’ve kept in touch, of course, but I still haven’t ever gotten up and done anything about it. Too intimidated, probably. Nevertheless, it’s time to straighten up and really get on it. I’m reading the Henry Chadwick translation in paperback available from Oxford UP (ISBN 0192833723). I’ve annotated the first Book’s notes (subdivisions are first by book, then by chapter and section), and will proofread and post the highlights here as I go through it.

Meanwhile, I’m interested in what you have to say about it. Have you ever read Augustine or know anything about him or his writings? Would you like to discuss the Neoplatonists in general? Leave me a comment here or post on the forum. I’d love to hear what you have to say.

I was a latecomer to a discussion on the “Disappearance of Childhood” (with several references to the book by the same name by Neal Postman) on the PhiClubGTC mailing list. Interesting to me was the idea, raised by a young lady [again, privacy/omission], that the question was not just whether the media are detrimentally influencing childhood experiences, but whether they affected the concept of childhood. Several questions were raised in that context:

1. What are the differences between being a child and being an adult?
2. How do we think children should learn about the world?
3. Are there things that adults should know and do that children do not, and vice versa?
4. Do some media (specifically television) change kids for the worse, neuro- or biologically?
5. Are there benefits to programs of hyperaccelerated learning?
6. Can we tell if/when kids are overloaded with facts/learning?

I attempted to weigh in on each of these issues; my thoughts are below. You’re cordially invited to contribute—comment here or discuss it in the newly-opened Forums!
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http://thinkforums.org/

I’ve enabled forums at ThinkBlog.org so as to facilitate the discussion of anything and everything, pretty much. If you have something you want to say, come say it here. This can be a great place to meet people with similar thoughts or interests, and if you don’t want to leave comments on the main site, come discuss in here!

Whether you agree or disagree with me on anything I say, come speak your mind. I welcome all points of view, as long as they’re conveyed cleanly and appropriately (i.e., no ad hominems).

Be well, sit back, relax, and come discuss!

Finally, this semester is over. Unfortunately, I comemmorated it irresponsibly last night, and that got me to thinking. I haven’t been plugged into a church lately, haven’t had that really sharp awareness that people are watching what I do to see whether a Christian really is different than the way everybody else acts.

I remember when I was in tenth grade, I would sit at the lunch table and try to answer people’s questions with Christian apologetics and scriptural arguments; then I’d go home, research the answer, and type up a response to bring them the next day, if necessary. I had this real awareness that people whose souls were parched were watching me to see if I really had living water in me. That didn’t even occur to me until today, when the thought slammed into me: “You should’ve been salt and light. You should’ve been. You weren’t.” That’s conviction. But I do wonder if I wouldn’t have been more careful, more humble and temperate, if I’d been plugged into a church. As it is, I’m going to go to church tomorrow, and I will have made the classic error that is the reason many people call Christians hypocrites: get hammered on the weekend, show up smiling at church on Sunday.

So what does it take to change? Maybe confessing something like this, of which to be ashamed, will prove to be the stinging nettle that humbles and motivates me to change. Last night, I was “that guy.” I don’t ever want to go there again, to blow my witness, to act the fool.

Over the next few months, I’m going to be writing a lot here about my thoughts on verses, chapters out of the Bible, and theological books and articles. I’m not going to let a stupid mistake fester and feel the liar and the hypocrite when I post that stuff: you, dear reader, will know that I am human, I make (sometimes HUGE) mistakes, but I’m honest with you. And maybe, by telling on myself, I’ll think twice next time before I begin to rationalize and let myself slip.

Incidentally, here’s a great lesson in what Paul said, “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another–and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

Recently on the PhiClubGTC mailing list, there was a small sub-discussion that never really got too far off the ground, and I’d like to know what you think. One person (name withheld for privacy reasons unless said person tells me otherwise) asked in regard to giving people who are habitually out of work because of irresponsible use of funds or lack of education (as opposed to the disabled or simply laid-off), “Instead of awarding people money, why not offer them room, board, and tuition at an educational institution? Wouldn’t that help assure that the funds are being used appropriately, and not for drugs, alcohol, etc.?” I answered as follows:

This is an interesting question. The only immediate thing that comes to mind as far as what’s prohibiting this is, how would everyone get along in this living situation? How would they handle being taken away from their homes and placed in this kind of corporate environment, where presumably they would be exposed to different things than what they’re used to? Seems like they might feel isolated, and have to “medicate” if you get my drift. What would they do with their families? Might be an enormous cost if they all came with.

Also, and perhaps primarily, what about the concept of personal responsibility? Would people really be receptive of this kind of treatment, if they believed (however erroneously, HA!) education is useless? Students at institutions like colleges and universities have a certain responsibility–they’ve had to show their mettle to be allowed in, and if they goof off or vandalize, they’re kicked back out. Maybe it wouldn’t be bad, but I can just see it being like middle- and high-school all over again for many of these people: a bad situation with too many external controls where they don’t want to betaken care of–which leads to violence and all sorts of “cetera.”

So, what do you think? Is room & board plus an education a viable alternative to the traditional welfare system?

http://www.wga.hu/

This is an enormous database of relatively-high resolution photos of various paintings and pieces of sculpture from (mostly) western Europe from the Ottonian/Gothic period through the Baroque and beyond. From the main page of the site:

The Web Gallery of Art is a virtual museum and searchable database of European painting and sculpture of the 12th-18th centuries. It was started in 1996 as a topical site of the Renaissance art, originated in the Italian city-states of the 14th century and spread to other countries in the 15th and 16th centuries. Intending to present Renaissance art as comprehensively as possible, the scope of the collection was later extended to show its Byzantine and Gotique roots as well as its evolution to Baroque and Rococo via Mannerism.

The collection has some of the characteristics of a virtual museum. The experience of the visitors is enhanced by guided tours helping to understand the artistic and historical relationship between different works and artists, by period music of choice in the background and a free postcard service. At the same time the collection serves the visitors’ need for a site where various information on art, artists and history can be found together with corresponding pictorial illustrations. Although not a conventional one, the collection is a searchable database supplemented by a glossary containing articles on art terms, relevant historical events, personages, cities, museums and churches.

The Web Gallery of Art is intended to be a free resource of art history primarily for students and teachers. It is a private initiative not related to any museums or art institutions, and not supported financially by any state or corporate sponsors. However, we do our utmost, using authentic literature and advice from professionals, to ensure the quality and authenticity of the content.

We are convinced that such a collection of digital reproductions, containing a balanced mixture of interlinked visual and textual information, can serve multiple purposes. On one hand it can simply be a source of artistic enjoyment; a convenient alternative to visiting a distant museum, or an incentive to do just that. On the other hand, it can serve as a tool for public education both in schools and at home.

This old IBM USB 1.1 webcam from years back takes small, grainy pictures, and it’s old as dirt, but it still works and it’s the best thing I’ve got as far as webcams (I mean, I don’t really want people monitoring my facial expressions, so I have no use for a better one). So I wanted to try to get this thing working under Linux, and I’ve been putting it off for quite some time.

Running usbview, the device isn’t recognized (though my CanoScan N1240U is, and it works like a charm with the default SANE interfaces), but we can pull the vendor (0733) and device (0401) IDs from the right-hand pane. The rest of the information (there’s plenty) is pretty much irrelevant.

Googling for “0733 0401 Linux” comes up with the first few relevant results, details on the driver support for Linux.

Frankly, it’s not quite worth it to me to have to recompile my kernel just to install this as a module, but I am very curious to hear other peoples’ ideas. How does this do with the 2.6.x kernel tree? I’ll be recompiling over the weekend and I’ll post the results of this little venture.

I went today to Lowe’s and picked up eight concrete blocks (12×8x16, yeah, you know the kind) and lifted my bed up 8″ (20.32cm) from where it was. It’s great to have it up that high; I didn’t realize how much I’d like it. I’m planning to go back for four more to complete the job, with a full increase of about 16″ above the 7.5″ that it came up anyway. Right now, the top of the mattress is exactly 3′ (91.44cm) above the floor! Now, the only problem is, I’m exhausted and I’m going to be very, very sore tomorrow.

It occurs to me that the times that it is most important for me to do very well, the closer I wait till the deadline to get motivated. My final and hardest exam is tomorrow at 1400 EST, and I’ve yet to crack the book. This could be disastrous, but no: I had to go to Lowe’s. It was quite essential.

An old professor asked me about this phenomenon in his other students, as well. I told him I thought it was a pride thing. Think about it: it feels really good to wait until the last moment to catch up. We all think ourselves hares on top of the world until the tortoises pass us up while we’re posting to our websites distracted or sleeping (metaphorically, of course). If you can start a few seconds after the starting gunshot and still win the gold, why would you not?

I’ll tell you why not. Because it ends up causing more stress in the end, and even if you do win, it’s not by as much as you could have won. If I can make a `B’ in a class by hardly showing up (hypothetically), why didn’t I just show up and make the `A’ that would have been inevitable. Mmm. Pride.

So, I’m off to study, then to sleep; but let’s just hope I’m not humbled when I take the test tomorrow.

Firefox is scheduled to soon run a page-sized ad in the New York Times that will include 10,000 names of supporters. Whether the ad qualifies for the “advocacy” rate versus the “business” rate is the big question right now, and we’ll just have to wait and see.

But while you wait, check this out. An MSI for the Windows version, while not standard with the browser from Mozilla.org, is available from two sites mentioned on Slashdot (in the comments section):

• http://www.frontmotion.com/Firefox/
• http://firefox.dbltree.com/

This is good news for those of you running a large corporate network–or for those of you who reinstall Windows all the time!

Here’s hoping the ad attracts new and different people to the open-source, standards-compliant browser!

http://thinkblog.org/media/papers/PhillipsNonstdSpcLangComp.pdf

This paper is an evaluation of the work done by Arnold, et al. (2004) and Gordon, et al. (1993) and how their work fits together. Some very interesting findings; if I can work out whether it’s legal for me to post the articles, I’ll do so.

• Arnold, J. E., Tanenhaus, M. K., Altmann, R. J., & Fagnano, M. (2004). The old and thee, uh, new: Disfluency and reference resolution. Psychological Science, 15(9), 578-582.
• Gordon, P. C., Grosz, B. J., & Gilliom, L. A. (1993). Pronouns, names, and the centering of attention in discourse. Cognitive Science, 17, 311-347.

Click the title of the post for the PDF version. Be advised, the only revisions I’ve done have been minor reformatting, so if you see the clumsy sentences, be forgiving. Alternately to the PDF, feel free to read more below for the full text. All text that follows is Copyright © 2004-2005 Michael Phillips.
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http://people.clemson.edu/~mmichel/martin_home/mainfiles/MAIN.HTM

In the fall of 2000, I began as a freshman majoring in computer science at Clemson University. (Incidentally, the front page of the CompSci program there hasn’t changed since then.) As a part of our English 101 class in the then-pilot Laptop Program (using Dell CPt Pentium IIIs), we were told to team up with someone in the class and develop part of a web page: specifically, as a class, we were to develop a kind of primer for new, incoming students.

My friend of better than seven years, Josh, and I teamed up to knock out the part that dealt with the technology side of things. Well, last night, on a whim, I decided to Google site:clemson.edu for this stuff, and sure enough, there it all is in its old obsolete glory, still on the web for the world to see. The text of my part, “Connectivity & Networking Technology@Clemson.edu,” is echoed as follows, and then Josh’s part, a much easier-to-read piece (with pictures!) afterward. I hope you get a kick out of it.
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I was setting up a new box for my girlfriend (hi honey!) last night and I couldn’t get the thing to work for the life of me until Jeff pointed out to me that, unlike the old motherboard (a Shuttle MK32N that just decided not to boot one day), this new one had P4 power connectors even though I was using a Socket A AMD 1800+ (no overclocking yet, though). The motherboard I’m pretty pleased with, by the way: on-board sound, video, LAN, and all the rest.

Anyway, I was trying to get this thing installed as quickly as possible with all the necessaries: updates, browser, email client, media player, you know the drill. Here are my top picks, a veritable Who’s Who of Windows software, all of it free (as in speech, most of it, but some of it as in beer, too).
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http://www.jewfaq.org/holiday7.htm

At sundown tonight, the Jewish Festival of Lights begins. (Jewish calendars reckon the days having started with darkness because of the order of Creation. It’s a great concept, one I’ll definitely have to revisit: think of the night of the soul before God breathes order and light into it!) This, the 25th day of Kislev (the ninth month of the Hebrew calendar), marks the beginning of the eight-day festival.

When the Jews were being brutally persecuted by Antiochus, who was also defiling the Temple and sacrificing pigs on the altar (it’s difficult to convey how vile both of these are to the Jewish people: the reaction to the World Trade Centers falling is a shadow that comes closest to this evil in the mind of a Jew), a few of them got together and revolted.

Revolutionary success was followed by a different crisis: there was not enough oil left undefiled for the menorah, which was supposed to burn all night every night, to even burn through a single night. Nevertheless, the menorah burned for eight days, after which there was again enough oil.

Check the Jew FAQ for more information.

Happy Hanukkah. Be well.