Welcome!
Just a few things that caught my eye:
Global Warming Silliness. Let’s review: Nasa said October was the hottest on record. Up 10 Degrees. Global Warming. We’re all gonna die. Oh, wait… Turns out the incompetents used Septembers numbers… And October turned out to be colder than usual… But we’re supposed to believe them? Gimme a break.
In other news, let’s see… how to fix the economy… Well, let’s split a $499 bottle of wine and figure it out:
LinkYea… I know… Islam teaches peace…
Finally, the whole world is glad Obama will bring peace… or no?
I remember my grandfather telling me about being a sand pebble in the great war. I remember stories about the great depression. I remember my dad telling me about Korea. While the stories in of themselves were often times tragic, I always felt a lump in my throat as I thought of the underpinnings of patriotism and heroism in those stories. Like most of the kids born in the 60’s I grew up with a G.I Joe, stood for the national anthem, and would punch anyone who said bad of my country.
As I reflect on these feelings I wonder what big story I may tell my grandchildren of America. I am saddened at the answer. Certainly I will have a tragic story, but what of the underpinnings of patriotism? What of the heroism? I fear those elements will be missing.
I will not bother to post links and facts about the president-elect. I don’t have to. First, because the information has been readily available for a very long time. Second, because it would seem that the average American doesn’t care about the facts any ways.
Yea, I know, I’m being mellow dramatic. I’m being silly. I don’t think so. I was raised to believe the President should be the nations greatest patriot, staunchest supporter, and best leader. Sadly, we elected someone who is none of those.
Much like a scene from a futuristic science-fiction movie, I can envision telling my grandchild of a time when we had freedom and rights. Of a time when we could own guns freely, and say what we believed what was right.
Clearly, the final page of the book of life of America is being written in our generation. I see no Patrick Henry or George Washington stepping up this time. No Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson. No tea in the harbour or whiskey rebellion.
Predictions? None for the next 4 years, but plenty for the rest of my generation. I see a systematic dismantling of our national sovereignty. I see mass gun confiscations. I see an end to parental rights. I see a curtailing of free speech. I see imprisonment for those who object. I see a massive collapse of our economy.
Alexis de Tocqueville is generally attributed as having said:
“I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers - and it was not there . . . in her fertile fields and boundless forests and it was not there . . . in her rich mines and her vast world commerc - and it was not there . . . in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution - and it vas not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.”
Today, America has turned her back on the countless millions who dies to preserve her greatness. In doing so, she has ceased to be great. It is in her ceasing to be great she has ceased to live.
Lincoln so eloquently stated:
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
“Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked…” Revelation 3:17
Rest In Peace, America.
What do you do? I am quite old fashioned and very conservative. But what do you do? What do you do when the the pain of circumstances out weigh the peace of sticking to your values? Do you refuse to give in knowing you will not be happy as a result or do you “cut and run” knowing you compromised? It’s an easy choice if it’s over one of God’s clearly laid out directives, but what about when it’s not? What about when it’s over an issue that God was somewhat ambiguous about explaining? What do you do?
Well, I’ve never done a review of a distro that I can remember and this isn’t really meant to be one but I do have some observations about gOS.
I tried this out in version 2 and I thought it just wasn’t ready for use. Version 3 has changed my mind.
I took a day to install it and figure it out and here’s some random observations:
It uses a nice implementation of Gnome 2.2.2 and is clean looking. I like green anyways. gOS is based on Ubuntu 8.04 and uses synaptic. I am a Fedora guy but found using synaptic pretty straight forward.
The first frustration I noticed was that the desktop provided an icon for Youtube… but the default FireFox install didn’t have flash enabled… Ok, no problem just install from synaptic… but it really is frustrating to new users; frustrating enough to quit right there.
Moving on, it has a host of google gadgets and all the software I’d expect to see except for GIMP. I added that from synaptic along with Amarok, MPlayer, and Audacious. I dumped totem.
I wasn’t able to try out compiz as I didn’t really have a video card to try it out on.
I would never use this for myself but I’d have no issue installing if for someone who simply wants to surf the net, type some letters, and play solitare. It seems VERY able to do that… and that describes a lot more people than most wanna admin
Anyways, give it a try! www.thinkgos.com
I read these two articles and I just gotta say I couldn’t agree more.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Murphy/?p=1274
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Murphy/?p=1275Why support the problem?
I made a decision when I started my consulting business that I would run my operation on a non-M$ platform even though the bulk of my customer base uses M$. I have had to overcome a few obstacles but I can say that I have never regretted the decision. I perform a variety of services from Database programming to web application design to hardware troubleshooting and a host of other network and server related tasks.
I have found that I can do more faster with very few exceptions compared to when I used to be M$ based.
Along the way I feel good about myself knowing I have helped along the Linux community and won over a few converts along the way.
I’ll close with the real life story. I met a nice older lady who lives in a single wide trailer with her husband. They are retired and the internet is a big part of her life now. I met her as a customer referral because her M$ box was “broken”. The problem was in spite of her having paid for an active subscription to a big name internet security suite, her PC was running at 100% all the time. Sound familiar? Well, I fixed her problem after several hours of cleaning the badguys from her pc. While at the office she noticed my working between two applications as I processed her invoice. What caught her eye was my spinning my decked out compiz cube. She was fascinated. She asked if it was Vista and I couldn’t help but chuckle… After 10 minutes of watching what I could do all the while extolling the virtues of surfing the ‘net safely under Linux and Firefox she was sold. She picked up her PC the next day with a decked out install of Fedora 9 dual booting with her M$. I haven’t made any more money cleaning cooties off her PC since (I wonder if that’s the point sometimes…) but I have had several referrals from her friends, so I’m still way ahead.
I have other stories like this, including converting a technophobe to penguinhood, but I’ll save that for another time.
It has occurred to me that they best thing that could happen to Christianity would be for 90% of those who profess it to keep their mouth shut. They aren’t helping.
For those of you who judge God harshly, please don’t judge Him by what you see in those who profess Him.
He is all Glory, and all Might, and all Majesty, but you’d never know that by those who profess to be His children.
Psalms 144:1,2 - Blessed be the LORD my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight: My goodness, and my fortress; my high tower, and my deliverer; my shield, and he in whom I trust; who subdueth my people under me.
Well, I played around with a lot of ideas and this is what I came up with! I hope you like the new logo and site look! The main site is custom made and the backend is themed wordpress.
Anyways, here it is
I was trying to hash out the syntax of a cookie for folks returning to a shoutbox I’m writing in PHP. Just thought this would be helpful for anyone learning PHP.
if(isset($_GET['set'])){
setcookie('shoutbox','shoutboxdata',time()+60*60*24*365*10);
header('Location: cookietest.php');
}
else{
if(isset($_COOKIE['shoutbox'])){
echo "cookie is set";
}
else{
echo "cookie is not set";
}
}
?>Now you got a cookie to dunk in your milk.
Random background image script
Well, I was trying to make an automatic backgrounc color script for a webpage that randomly changed. This is what I came up with.
You can view the site at http://tranquilpenguin.com/domain.php
The code is:
<?php
header(”Content-type: image/png”);
$q=rand(1,3);
$a=0;
$b=rand(0,254);
$c=rand(0,254);
$im=@imagecreatetruecolor(1, 2000) or die(”Cannot Initialize new GD image stream”);
$background_color = imagecolorallocate($im, 0, 0, 0);
$color=imagecolorallocate($im,$b,$c,0);
imageline($im, 0, 0, 1, 0, $color);
for ($i=0;$i<200;$i++) {
if ($q==1) {$color=imagecolorallocate($im,$b,$c,$a);}
if ($q==2) {$color=imagecolorallocate($im,$a,$b,$c);}
if ($q==3) {$color=imagecolorallocate($im,$c,$a,$b);}
imageline($im, 0, $i, 10, $i, $color);
if ($i <= 254) {$a++;} else{$a=$a-1;}
}
$z=$i;
while($z<2000){
imageline($im, 0, $z, 10, $z, $color);
$z++;
}
$color=imagecolorallocate($im,$b,$c,0);
imageline($im, 0, 2000, 10, 2000, $color);
imagepng($im);
imagedestroy($im);
?>In the CSS of the main page just call the background like this:
body{
background: url(http://YOURDOMAIN.com/colors2.php);
background-repeat:repeat-x;
}Feel free to tell me a better way to do it.