I just made a short post over at Church and Postmodern Culture about the future of theology (direct link). In some ways, this is where I find my future research leading.
I want to graduate and move on to a doctoral program, but I feel like I’ve just gotten a feel for my advisor’s work (which is right in my area…see the previous post over at Church and Postmodern Culture!). I would love to collaborate with him in the future.
I enjoy reading way too much. Nearly every book that I read leads me to three others that all look interesting. I’m on a first-name basis with the circulation desk at the school library.
When I first started my MA program, I felt like I knew very little of everything. Some of the links and connections in classes were so foreign (e.g. Deleuze!) that I had no idea how to understand them. It wasn’t until a class I took last year that these connections were understood in rudimentary ways. Now, I feel like every book I read is a new daybreak, a new revelation, a new idea. Some of the more recent books I’ve read have found ways of connecting my interest(s) in technology and programming with philosophy and theology.
I have five weeks left to write my papers. For my class on globalization, I want to explore the notion of identities as multiplicities. For my class on Augustine and Origen, I want to tease out Augustine’s and Origen’s feelings on language and compare them to modern semiotics: their “rule of faith” as a crutch for language.
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Published 4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Geekiness.
My amazing wife got me a new toy, a Logitech Harmony 880 remote. Our old remote was starting to not work properly, so we needed a new one. I mentioned having one of these would be cool never expecting to actually have one. She was able to find it for cheap off of craigslist.org as an early Easter present. My reasoning behind wanting this remote is that it can be programmed to work with our MythBox, something that had been difficult with other remotes. One of the cool things I didn’t know before is that it is rechargeable. Less batteries, yay! The other nice thing is that it can be configured to work with nearly any device, new or old.
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The end of t he term is nigh and I’m spending the weekend reading books (8 from my collection, 14 from the school library) and writing my paper. Yet, it never fails that when it comes time to write, I am more interested in wasting time (see here). The most ironic part is that I’m actually interested in what I write, but I always get that last minute urge to do something–anything!–else. Anyhow, as this is one of those moments, I felt that I can reclaim it by narrowing what my paper topic is: the role that “tradition” and “orthodoxy” play in the game of interpreting and defining “sacred scriptures” (e.g. the Canon, the Bible, etc). By looking at the way books such as Shepherd of Hermas, Epistle of Barnabas, and 1 & 2 Maccabees have been treated in 1st - 4th century Christianity (and Judaism where appropriate), I think I will find some interesting ideas behind the process of canonization.
Technorati Tags: Canon, orthodoxy, scriptures
Well, since the crash of my MythBox, I’ve been playing with recovering the hard drive. My first choice (i.e. easiest) was to simply install a new distro and keep the original data from the /home and /var partitions. That didn’t work so well (boot fails after GRUB finishes). So, I’ve spent the day playing with the data. Here’s the damage: many inconsistencies on the partitions (no bad blocks, however) and a bad partition table. The table was fixed by running fdisk and removing some partitions. Once that was done, I was able to run fsck (and some variations of) on the two partitions I want to keep (one is in ReiserFS 3, the other in JFS).
Then, I moved everything on my normal box onto a spare hard drive. Then, I moved everything from the /var partition onto that spare as well. Finally, I copied what I could from the /home partition and split it (basically) over the spare hard drive and the space I had on my normal drive.
Now, it is time to reinstall everything and start from there. If I can get to a point where I could shell into the computer, I’ll be happy (because I could then finish setting up MythTV remotely if needed).
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Well, my MythBox, which has been running Ubuntu Feisty has failed me. It seems to have been a bug in the 2.16.20 kernel. The main thrust of the bug was that it screwed with the I/O (read/write) to the hard disk. The first noticeable problem was at three weeks after the upgrade from Edgy because my /home partition (JFS for the very large video files) crashed. I was able to recover the log, but I thought the problem was in the JFS package. After ten days of research, I discovered that it wasn’t JFS (which hasn’t had any major upgrades for quite a while) but the kernel package. So, I contemplated my two options: upgrade to the 2.16.21 kernel (which was in gutsy) or downgrade back to Edgy. It’s nearly impossible to manually downgrade Ubuntu without having a lot of headache, so I chose the upgrade path (after all, my main computer runs Debian unstable with a few experimental packages). During the upgrade, apt-get choked on a disk I/O and the system is no longer bootable. Joy.
Since I now have to reinstall the system (and hopefully recover the pertinent data from my /var and /home partitions), I did some more research. My first priority was remain in the Debian-based system. Second was having a very stable system with less frequent updates (this was, for all intents and purposes, a server environment in which cutting edge is unnecessary). Some things I would need on this box: MySQL server, Apache, PHP, MythTV (of course), Subversion, an FTP daemon, and a SSH daemon. Right off, most MythTV-specific distros were out because they make it somewhat difficult to install other programs/packages. Ubuntu was out because this was the second time I’ve had some major problems with it. So, I settled on Debian stable. It has all the packages I want/need, and it’s super-stable. I’ve not have a bad experience with Debian stable (Debian testing, on the other hand…). SO, during whatever free time I may have this week, I will be re-installing old faithful.
Technorati Tags: debian, Feisty, kernel, Ubuntu
My Vespa look-a-like came in today. It was heavy and had some assembly required. I took it for a spin around the block to get used to the feeling of riding a scooter. Very fun. It came with a bunch of stuff: a cover, a tire lock, and an alarm with remote start. Its 1.5 gal tank gives me 70 mpg, so I can go about 100 miles on a full tank.
This is what it looks like:
Technorati Tags: scooter, Vespa
After many moons and suns, debian has finally released a new stable: Etch. I’ve been running Etch for over a year now (back when it was considered “testing”). With this release also means that the new “testing” version has been codenamed “Lenny.” To many Linux users, Debian is much like the Cadillac of Linux, being a very dependable distribution with a long maintenance cycle. It took the Debian developers 21 months to tweak Etch into a stable distribution. It’ll be at least 18 months before another stable version is released. And that is why I tend to keep my copy in the testing and unstable branches because a lot can happen in 18 months (KDE ought to have its new version 4.0 out well before then). Of course, with Ubuntu’s latest version about to be released, this news won’t last long.
Technorati Tags: debian, Etch, KDE, Linux, Ubuntu
Well, my computer parts came in today as planned. I spent the morning assembling everything and installing the base system. I tried to go with Ubuntu, but it became problematic. Here’s why:
- I wanted to have separate partitions for /boot and /tmp. This nice development, once I worked it out, still screwed up the install of GRUB and the computer would not boot from the hard drive unless I put the install CD and manually made it boot from the hard drive.
- The madwifi (atheros chipset-based wireless cards) driver would not cooperate with wpa_supplicant (the binary for wireless cards to use WPA encryption).
- After getting #2 to work, the clock was screwed up (set to October 2006!) and would not let me use sudo (to correct the time).
- Of course, there is no root password, so trying to use su resulted in yet another problem.
So, I ditched Ubuntu and popped in dvd disc 1 of Debian Etch (the newly released isos with the RC for the debian-installer). It has a new graphical installation, but that’s over-the-top as the text installer is more intuitive and easier to use (I ran both for the hell of it!). My only difficulty was getting madwifi to work because it is not included on the dvds…I had to download it on another computer, save it to a disc, then install it manually. After installing it, it had some problem at first resolving the IP address from my router (small user error in configuring wpa_supplicant). But, it’s running nicely now (after manually building the alsa and madwifi modules). So, Ubuntu may be nice for those who don’t have a clue as to what they’re doing, but it also restricts what one is able to do if one knows what one is doing and likes root. Sorry (k|x|ed)Ubuntu, it’s just not my cup of tea.
Technorati Tags: debian, GRUB, madwifi, Ubuntu
Last Wednesday, my computer shot a spark out of its back (I’m assuming the power supply was the culprit). I’ve ordered some new pieces, but wanted to know if there was a way of testing the parts at home (I’ve got a really nifty multi-function meter) to see what’s salvageable. For instance, If I hook up a new power supply to a stripped down system (motherboard, cpu, and ram), do I run the risk of frying the power supply? The problem seemed to start a few weeks ago when the system would seem to build up static electricity (yes, I installed the mobo correctly). The system became sensitive around the front case fan (I had a total of three: one on the side, one in front, and one in the rear) and any sometimes touching the case would (1) cause a static discharge and (2) a system reset. Since I didn’t have much time to fool with it beyond trying to figure out where that was coming from, my solution was to not touch it. Well, Wednesday, it finally froze completely and would not shut down (even after attempting a hard reset), and my touch to the switch caused the fireball (it was cool, except for the dead system part).
So, here are some questions for other geeks:
- Could the case (or the case fan) be contributing to the imbalance in static electricity?
- Can using a new (and assumed good) power supply on a possibly fried motherboard (or cpu) screw up the power supply?
- I know that I can run memtest86 for the ram, but what about any tests for the motherboard and cpu?
- I’ve got an external adapter for the hard drive (so I can transfer my data if it works without screwing up a system), but are there any good tests for it?
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Here it is. A modified version of Now Reading that includes K2 compatibility, a sidebar module for K2, and the on hold feature. Only difference for on hold feature from previous post is the on hold section in the library page.
Also, I noticed one slight difficulty when I upgraded the NR plugin from an ancient one. With the addition of the “started reading” field in the database, it did not add the info from the pre-existing books. So, if you’re upgrading from an early version that only had “date added” and “date finished,” run this SQL:
UPDATE `wp_now_reading` SET `b_started` = `b_added` WHERE `b_started` = '0000-00-00 00:00:00` AND `b_added` != '0000-00-00 00:00:00`;
-
UPDATE `wp_now_reading` SET `b_started` = `b_added` WHERE `b_started` = ‘0000-00-00 00:00:00` AND `b_added` != ‘0000-00-00 00:00:00`;
In other words, set the date started reading to the sate the book was added whenever there is no start date but there is an added date.
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Talk
thainamu
Chris Martin
Wilson, Rick, brad, christopher, brad, christopher, brad, christopher, brad
christopher, Jeffrey Rodriguez
pfunked, christopher, pfunked
Jasen