Upgrading It's A Binary World 2
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Site Info
I have some new posts up on It's A Binary World 2 for you to check out. However, later today (in the evening) I will be upgrading the blog software. If you can't access the blog, just come back about 15 minutes later and it should all be set up.
---
edit - messed up royally on the URL of the blog. It's fixed now.

Happy Valentine's Day
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Holidays
I have posted two different posts in my blogs today. So you get twice the fun. Access the other one here.

What is Saint Valentine's Day about anyway? I wanted to share this with you since I found myself wondering the same thing...

In researching the answer, I compiled facts from these three sources, Saint Valentine, Wikipedia Entry for Saint Valentine, and Wikipedia Entry for Lupercalia.

As the Wikipedia entry suggests, we know very little about Saint Valentine. Just like Saint Nicholous, it seems most of our holidays center around lesser known Saints. However, with Valentine even less is known. However, the British website does present us with some theories. Apparently, the Roman Emperor Claudius II had anulled all marriages and engagements in order to get men to go to war. I don't see what real effect this would have had on soldier morale. Just because someone declares my marriage invalid doesn't mean that I would stop loving my wife. It seems like the types of laws our Congress sometimes passes without thinking.

At any rate, such a law was not going to find a lot of popularity among the clerics of the early Christian church. Cancelling people's marriages probably had the unintended effect of "cheating" on wives since they were no longer wives, as well as some other potential societal and moral problems. Thus, the British site tells us, Saint Valentine performs underground marriages.

The Emporer catches wind of these covert operations and when the Saint doesn't recant, he is martyred. Conviniently, since he was performing marriages and other love things, he is killed on 14 Feb which is the day, in ancient Roman culture, where boys would draw girl's names from a pot and get to be with that girl all night at the festival. They would often end up getting married from this interaction.

As I pick up from the Wikipedia article, it is more likely that the date was fabricated by the early Catholic church eager to replace Lupercalia with a Saint's Feast Day as they had done with Easter and Christmas. Since his deeds had to do with love, they chose him to replace the Roman celebration of fertility and love.

In the 1800s in the United States, the holiday was commercialized and now we send each other cards and chocolate. Just like the Easter Bunny and certain elements of Christmas don't make sense outside of commercialism and a reversion to the pagan holidays they were meant to replace, Saint Valentine's Day has very little to do with this mysterious man.

g33k stuff
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Linux
First of all, I'm pretty happy that Linux Format Magazine (UK) ranked my distro, Fedora Core 3, as the second best of all the distros. Additionally, they expect it to edge into the number 1 spot with the release of Core 4 this may. q:o) More info on those reviews in a future post.

Second, if you're programming in the C programming language you will definitely want to check out Kwrite. My partner in ECE 476 was using some expensive commercial software that does some special formatting and apparently Kwrite does it too! For example, I can shrink down block statements to get a good overview of the code by clicking on a [-]. Neat!

Today's post can be found in my other blog
go here

Mo Rocca @ Cornell!
Mood:  chatty
Topic: School Stuff
Mo Rocca came to talk today at Cornell, thanks to a Sponsership from Hillel, the Campus Jewish group. Why they invited him, I don't know because he revealed during his performance that he was Catholic. But he did have a hilarious opening bit where he told this whole story using Yiddish.

He was quite hilarious and I caught some of it on my camera's video mode. I'm not 100% why because I don't normally use my camera for video but the picture is a bit jerky. Weird for a 12 MP camera. But I will be posting the video on my other blog probably tomorrow.

He also suprised the audience by giving us this traditional Jewish treat he had made for us. He actually put it on stage at the beginning and there was a crowd of people rushing to grab it.

He began his talk with he coverage of the 2004 presidential elections. His jokes brought forth both tons of laughter and a few jeers depending upon which political candidate he was talking about. But he stayed pretty neutral, lampooning both sides of the isle. The picture immediately above was accompanied by the joke, "yeah, the wedding photographer didn't do such a good job with those two." hehe...

He told us about his personal life, including the fact that he's good friends with Flava Flav, who you might know from the Surreal Life on VH1. He recounted a story when he went to the Metropolitan Museum in NYC with Flav where they were in the lobby and it's all quiet like church when Flav says, in a loud voice, "I want to see something with a f***ing pendulum!"

He talked about his contributions on VH1's I love the 70/80/90s and quizzed this kid on 90s stuff. He won a Celine Dion CD autographed by Mo Rocca.

All in all it was an awesome show! I also got to take a picture with Mo as well as get an autograph from him. I didn't scan the autograph, but here's the picture I took with him.

Today's Post
Mood:  chatty
Topic: politics
You can find (at least one of) today's posts here on my other blog, It's A Binary World 2

Happy Lunar New Year!
Mood:  celebratory
Happy New Year (Tet) to all of the Chinese, Vietnamase, and others out there Asian or not who celebrate. It is the year of the Rooster!

May all of you have prosperity and luck in the New Year!

Today's Post
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Site Info
Today's post can be found here at my new blog on my server. Again, a reminder that this will continue to be my blog through at least Sept and, for sentimental reasons, I may let this blog see its second birthday before fully migrating away. So don't stop coming to this site. Whenever I post on my other blog, I will link from here.

The Gospel of Tux
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Linux
I was listening to a book about hackers and the following excerpt from the Gospel of Tux was reproduced. I laughed so hard, partially because my study of the Old Testament allowed me to know that this is a parody of a real King. It took me about 10 minutes, but I found the passage.

2 Chronicles 10:12

"Three days later Jeroboam and all the people returned to Rehoboam, as the kind had said, "Come back to me in three days." The king answered them harshly. Rejecting the advice of the elders, he followed the advice of the young men and said, "My father made your yoke heavy, I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with wips; I will scourge you with scorpions."

Having read that, you are now more fully able to appreciate the parody found in this passage.


'Now it came to pass that Microsoft had waxed great and mighty among the Microchip Corporations; mighter than any of the Mainframe Corporations before it had it waxed. And Gates heart was hardened, and he swore unto his Customers and their Engineers the words of this curse:

"Children of von Neumann, hear me. IBM and the Mainframe Corporations bound thy forefathers with grave and perilous Licences, such that ye cried unto the spirits of Turing and von Neumann for deliverance. Now I say unto ye: I am greater than any Corporation before me. Will I loosen your Licences? Nay, I will bind thee with Licences twice as grave and ten times more perilous than my forefathers. I will engrave my Licence on thy heart and write my Serial Number upon thy frontal lobes. I will bind thee to the Windows Platform with cunning artifices and with devious schemes. I will bind thee to the Intel Chipset with crufty code and with gnarly APIs. I will capture and enslave thee as no generation has been enslaved before. And wherefore will ye cry then unto the spirits of Turing, and von Neumann, and Moore? They cannot hear ye. I am become a greater Power than they. Ye shall cry only unto me, and shall live by my mercy and my wrath. I am the Gates of Hell; I hold the portal to MSNBC and the keys to the Blue Screen of Death. Be ye afraid; be ye greatly afraid; serve only me, and live."

And the people were cowed in terror and gave homage to Microsoft, and endured the many grave and perilous trials which the Windows platform and its greatly bogacious Licence forced upon them. And once again did they cry to Turing and von Neumann and Moore for a deliverer, but none was found equal to the task until the birth of Linux.'

You can enjoy the entire Gospel of Tux by clicking here

Quotes are good for the soul
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Quotes
"Yeah, a nalgene bottle is indestructable, but I've never had a problem with my water bottle being destroyed." - Dan

(why it's dangerous to discuss sims w/o telling the other person first)
Danny: dude
Danny: stargazing is dangerous
Me: ?
Danny: I had Ian outside stargazing
Danny: and a satelite fell on him
Danny: and he died
Danny: and I bargained with the Grim Reaper
Danny: and I won
Me: oic
Me: I thought u meant in real life

"Google is awesome, but one can become so dependent on Google as to forget to check local sources such as books" - Eric Mesa