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I’ve become increasingly disillusioned with broadcast and cable news outlets. News outlets have sadly taken distinctly partisan roles in society. I find their content specious at best and makes for very poor commentary. (One notable except is Deutsche Welle.) I recently stumbled upon spiked, which itself has a bias but its bias pleasantly lacks the shrill insanity commonly found nowadays. It’s not news but rather commentary on newsworthy events and trends. Even those articles with which I disagree will often have a point two I hadn’t considered. I find this to be the real value. ...

Onliner bash scripts are handy but bash and common utilities don’t always work the same on the two systems I most use: Centos vs. OS X. centos $ cat /etc/redhat-release CentOS release 5.4 (Final) osx $ sw_vers | head -n2 ProductName: Mac OS X ProductVersion: 10.6.2 For example, I recently wrote a simple script to generate a set of UUID using the uuidgen utility. OS X and Centos versions of uuidgen take very different parameters. ...

I’m trying to move from Tomcat 5.5.28 to Tomcat 6.0.26 for my Struts2-based webapp. I previously tried–unsuccessfully–to make the move to Tomcat 6.0.20 but had to roll back. There were problems with the underlying connection to mail that I didn’t have time to track down. I use a standard stack. $ cat /etc/redhat-release CentOS release 5.4 (Final) $ /usr/sbin/httpd -v Server version: Apache/2.2.3 Server built: Nov 12 2009 18:43:41 $ java -version java version “1.6.0_18” Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_18-b07) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 16.0-b13, mixed mode) ...

“Who are you? What is identity? You like cheese, and sun on water. You know your age and what happens when your eyes grow tired. Filtered through some predisposition, you are the product of everything that ever happened to you, but if you lost your memory, who could you be?” – The Monkey, episode 30 “Who could you be?” The question is on my mind. ...

I ate too much last night. My wife had ‘girls night out’ which left me unsupervised as I made my dinner. I powered through an entire package of Johnsonville Brats. Cause and effect… I was wide awake at 2AM, bloated as a poisoned pup. Uffda! And, yes. It was worth it. “What the hell”, says me? Good time to catch up on some random and completely unnecessary web browsing. ...

Sometimes a problem persists long enough—is an irritant long enough—that I’ll burn an entire Sunday morning simply out of spite. Today’s irrational time-waste went to solving “Directory index forbidden by Options directive.” [marmaduke ~] $ cat /var/log/httpd/error_log \ | grep '\[error\]' \ | head -1 [Sun Dec 06 09:25:05 2009] [error] [client 192.168.2.29]↩ Directory index forbidden by Options directive:↩ /var/www/documentation/public_html/ I have a development server that I use to offload work from my laptop. ...

Yesterday, I stumbled upon a blog that made me laugh. The truth be told, I have a snarky side—my evil twin, if you will. I keep it in check. Mostly. Some of you who will understand. Some of you won’t. It’s a Gemini thing. My twin is fun but good luck putting it back in its cage. And believe me, for every dollar of fun you get, you’ll pay ten dollars in social disaster. Best to keep the twin in check. ...

Below are several resources I used in writing a speech delivered this morning for Early Risers Toastmasters entitled, “Feedback Loops in Personal Practices.” For those who were unable to attend, the talk focused on somatic learning and the importance of personal practices. (I am interested in personal practices as access to metaprogramming.) Feedback loops are important to mitigate the risk adopting destructive practices or of improperly performing the practice. I concluded with a tie-in reference to Theo’s new project of video recording the clubs speeches (if the speaker requests it). ...

Rolling Stone reports that Mazzy Star‘s “Sandoval confirms her [sic] and her bandmate David Roback haven’t called it quits and they are still working on their anticipated fourth album. But she declines to give many specifics. ‘It’s true we’re still together,’ she says. ‘We’re almost finished [with the record]. But I have no idea what that means.’” ...

I finished Mandarin Tuesday III this past Spring. There’s a lot going on at work and I must admit, I didn’t put in the same level of effort as I showed in Mandarin I and II. I believe anyone who is learning a foreign langauge will concur, class is a bitch when you’ve not put in the requisite study time. Nevertheless, perseverance pays and I crawled my way to the end. I have “completed” the entirety of “Practical Chinese Reader Book 1” but I still babble like an idiot when confronted with native Chinese speakers. So, what to do? Sign up for the next course! Pain? Haha! I laugh. I have known pain in my time. The mild embarrassment and frustration of language school is nothing. NOTHING! Bring it. ...