Month: May 2005

Categories
Philosophy

What is my world view?


[Cultural Creative]

I took this online World View quiz and scored as a Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. I am a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. I am very spiritual, even if I am not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational.

Cultural Creative
100%
Idealist
100%
Postmodernist
88%
Romanticist
50%
Fundamentalist
44%
Modernist
38%
Existentialist
31%
Materialist
25%

What is Your World View?

Categories
WordPress

Technorati and me

This is cool. I just learned that the categories of my blog posts are picked up by the Technorati search engine and used as tags. So, my Antiwar blog posts show up in a Technorati “search” for Antiwar, for example, according to this URI: http://www.technorati.com/tag/antiwar. Awesome. Check these out:

To see how this works, read the original article by Tom Raftery, entitled “WordPress Categories, Technorati Tags and Search Engine Optimisation”.

Categories
Audio Copyright Tech

An iPod plugin for Winamp

The iPod is pretty cool because it is so well designed, but it has some disadvantages. The prominent disadvantage is that it is completely tied to Apple’s iTunes software, and iTunes doesn’t work with older versions of Windows, such as Win98. According to this Wired article entitled “IPod Plug-In Sets Music Free”, iTunes is a 40-MB download, but Winamp is only 4 MB and the plugin only takes up 130 kB of space. So you can manage the iPod with an older version of Windows using Winamp. That’s cool. And furthermore, the plugin allows you to copy music from the iPod back onto a computer, a functionality that is missing (on purpose) from the iTunes software. The ml_iPod plugin has the following motto: “Your iPod just became useful.” Great!

Categories
Antiwar Philosophy Rant

The religious right: An anti-American terrorist movement

The title says it all: The religious right: An anti-American terrorist movement. It’s a very good essay that elucidates the extremism of the Religious Right movement in America. Most Christians that I know, including my family, do not hold such views consciously, but elements of their belief system overlap with such extreme ideas and can, in the extreme, be pushed in that direction. It was for this reason, I believe, that the framers of the U.S. constitution established a system that explicitly rejects a theocracy. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be holding up very well in today’s America.

Categories
Philosophy

Healing by post

I would like to share with you the PostSecret Blog, which is a gallery of peoples’ secrets displayed on 4×6 postcards that have been submitted to the site anonymously by mail. Here is an example:

[PostSecret: I didn't cry at my grandmother's funeral]

The gallery is amazingly human. People find healing in sharing their secrets. Others find healing in discovering a commonality with strangers. Spend some time there. What secret do you need to let go of…?

Categories
Antiwar

War Resisters Support Campaign

I just learned about the War Resisters Support Campaign and I signed their petition:

The War Resisters Support Campaign, a broad-based coalition of community organizations, has launched a petition aimed at Canada’s federal government to allow US war resisters who refuse to fight in Iraq to have refuge in Canada.

Initial signatories include June Callwood, David Suzuki, Maude Barlow, Shirley Douglas, Naomi Klein, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Amir Khadir, Paul Cliche and M.G. Vassanji.

The Americans talk so much about Freedom, but they have so little of it left. So we, as Canadians, should remain true to our tradition and continue to share our Freedom with others. May the Canadian government have the wisdom and courage to stand up to the American government and welcome her refugees.

Categories
Speech

Habemus Papam! Podcast

An amazing piece of audio history was captured by the Catholic Insider Podcast during the final moments when the most recent pope was announced. Father Roderick Vonhögen takes you into the middle of St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican on the evening of April 19, 2005, amidst the excited crowd, with people from almost every country expectantly waiting to see the white smoke and hear the bells proclaiming the new pope. The audio you hear is very real and it places you right in the midst of the action. Close your eyes as you listen and be taken to this special moment in history. It’s very personal and compelling.

Habemus Papam! – Catholic Insider, April 19, 2005 (54:14, 24.8 MB)

Note that the Catholic Insider site doesn’t provide a link to the show notes for this episode, so I have to link you to the mp3 file directly
(http://www.rorate.com/podcasts/ci20050419b.mp3).

Categories
Linux

Computers compared

On Linux, you can look at the file /proc/cpuinfo to find out information about your computer’s CPU. Here’s the info on my two machines.

“CARL”, my desktop at work:

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 15
model           : 0
model name      : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1500MHz
stepping        : 10
cpu MHz         : 1500.395
cache size      : 256 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 2
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 
     clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm
bogomips        : 2965.50

“BEAKER”, my desktop at home:

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 6
model           : 6
model name      : AMD Athlon(TM) XP2000+
stepping        : 2
cpu MHz         : 1261.442
cache size      : 256 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 1
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 
     mmx fxsr sse pni syscall mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow
bogomips        : 2498.56

According to the bogomips value, which is a hand-waving sort of index of cpu speed, my machine at work should be faster. Now CARL has 384 MB of RAM and its video card only 32 MB, but BEAKER has 512 MB of RAM and 64 MB of video RAM, so BEAKER has a much quicker user interface. Note that both of these machines have motherboards and CPUs that are three years old. But they still run great for what I do with them.

What bogomips values do your computers have?

Categories
Philosophy

A year later

I just looked back and re-read the entry on William James that I wrote a year ago. I was prompted to do this by a similar exercise that Mandi went through the other day on her blog. First, I was surprised that I had something interesting to say back then, and that I did so eloquently. I guess lately I’ve held a low view of my own ability to write. Second, and more importantly, I’m able to see how far I’ve come since being so depressed at that time. These days, generally, I feel good and am excited about life. My energy is not always high, but my thinking is pretty clear and I have ambitions again. I mentioned this to Gulistan the other day, how the world is so interesting and there are so many things to explore, but how I can narrow my focus by putting my energy into creating things. I want to create, and that is what will carry me from now on.

Categories
China Tech

Gmail Tip

When logging in to Gmail, if you request the login page by specifying https explicitly in the address bar, as:

https://gmail.google.com/gmail

then your entire Gmail session will be encrypted, not just the password authentication handshake. Cool, eh?

Update: This tip will also help solve any problems with connecting to Gmail from China.