Well, my technical issues resolved themselves quicker than I expected, thankfully. Thinklings has been upgraded to Bloo version 1.35 (as yet unreleased, but just about ready to be set loose).

Here's what's new in this release:

• Bloo now supports full comment moderation
• The comment thread subscription is enhanced. For instance, you can now cancel your subscription to a comments thread - every comment email you receive has a link which, if clicked on, will unsubscribe you
• Added two new spam Captchas: Bloo Captcha (which we've been using here for awhile and which is currently in force for Thinklings comments) and Google's reCaptcha service.
• Private Site, a new Bloo extension SnapOn, which allows you to set your entire blog private, meaning that only logged-in users can see it
• Max Links Spam Filter, also a Bloo extension SnapOn, in the Spamicide collection. Spammers, we hates them. we hates them forevah!!
• Emails coming from the system now look better (or that's the theory)
• Fixed a bug that caused comment counts to show no comments when viewing posts by category
• Performed various other bug fixes and architectural improvements

I posted this a few years ago as yet another testament to my own cluelessness.

In my defense, I have a growing conviction that our lives in the West, in general, are too cluttered and clogged with gadgetry, entertainment, and the like. I'm trying very hard to simplify. So buying yet another gadget is generally anathema to me.

But a month or two ago, I bought a Kindle.

Oh my, this thing is great. I'm not saying it works great (if "great" is defined as feature-rich). It doesn't have a lot of flash or dazzle, and it doesn't even have a backlight. It just is great. I use mine as simply as possible, rarely expose it to the internet, don't use it as an mp3 player, etc. I just read on it. And for that, it's awesome.

Though it's an electronic device, it's been a vehicle of simplification for me, oddly enough. All the books I want in one nice, tight, light little package. And a battery life that has to be experienced to be believed.

And the books! Being naturally cheap, I've been reading primarily free ones. Classics. This device has opened up a new world to me. Russian short stories, Father Brown, Jane Eyre, Sherlock Holmes, Moby Dick, Dostoevsky, Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Spurgeon. I downloaded the ESV Bible on it for free. I read more now than I have in decades, because it is so simple to just pick that thing up and start reading.

I am holding out on the iPad, iPhone, and even the Droid (had one for awhile. Gave it to my better half - she loves it).This is ironic, because I am a technologist. My peers at work are starting to talk . . .

But I do love my Kindle.

Since my mother-in-law is not on the geeky side, I recommended that her next laptop be a Macbook. All she needed was a computer to get on the Internet and keep track of her spreadsheets, so I figured a Macbook would be great. It came in a few weeks ago and I helped her turn it on and set it up. I've been impressed with Apple's reputation for a quality product that's easy to use (e.g. the iPod), and her Macbook is definitely a beauty to behold. But ...

... I'll say this once very clearly: I detest Macs.

Back in college (circa 1998) I used to love them. I thought they were the greatest things in the world, but now I can't stand those little devils. The reason is they're impossible to figure out. I downloaded two programs for her (OpenOffice and Firefox), and, for the life of me, I could not figure out how to install them, so after a few minutes, I stopped trying. (And I'm not computer illiterate; I'm relatively computer-savvy, actually.) Contrast that with me and my wife's new Windows 7 laptop where installing programs is a breeze ("Click Next to install," etc.).

Plus there are a few other factors that annoy me about Macs: 1. Safari is a pain. 2. No right click option. 3. Everything is opposite where it is on a Windows machine (for example, the minimize button). 4. A lot of programs (i.e. my version of Chessmaster) do not come in Mac versions.

Steve, I love your iPods, but I'll pass on your overpriced PC's. I paid, literally, half the price for a snappy Windows lapper that will last me 3 to 5 years, which is the same life expectancy I would want from a Mac.

P.S. I'd still recommend a Mac for my mother-in-law, if only for virus protection.

This is awesome. An actual, working flying car, built by the son of martyred missionary Nate Saint.

Are you tired of struggling with Microsoft Windows?

Two alternatives:

The cheap one - Ubuntu Linux



Linux is not necessarily for the faint-hearted, but it is a more stable OS than Wind'ohs, and you can run it from a CD or on a dual-boot option if you want to try it out without a lot of risk. It's a straightforward install, but you'll feel more at home with Linux if you have a strong inner-nerd.

And you won't spend hours on the phone with tech-support (I'm not sure there is telephone tech support) but you can find out how to fix any problem you have by googling for it. Someone else has gone through what you've gone through. There's a large and active ubuntu community out there.

PLUS - it is absolutely free, now and forever. And it comes with a huge library of free software to do almost anything you need. I use Ubuntu myself, and run Opera for a web browser, Thunderbird for email, OpenOffice for MS Office capabilities, plus a large array of other software. My current favorite app is the Lucidor ebook reader (I'm finishing up reading Dostoevsky's The Idiot as we speak - that book was also free). If you're a developer type like me, it's a fabulous environment to work in.

Free.

The second alternative? Not so free. But still great. Get a Mac.



Five and a half years ago I debated on this site whether to get a Mac. Some people were telling me that Macs don't last long and are non-upgradable. The Mac we bought in 2004 still runs great, and I've upgraded it two OS levels and for a larger disk and memory, and - full disclosure - I replaced the motherboard on it last year, but was able to do it myself. We recently bit the bullet and bought a new iMac, just to get newer capabilities and more performance. It is one sweet machine. Macs, by the way, run on top of a linux variant.

Not free. But awesome.

I'm so tired of updates on my computer. I get the dumb reminder, and it wants to install, (or it installs itself) and then it tells me I have to restart, and if I don't it'll eventually do it to me anyway when I walk away from the computer. And it's not just Window's, it's all kinds of programs. Feels like every program needs to update:
Virus Protection
Web Browser (in my case, firefox. They're the worst offenders. It's like once a week.)
Flash
Java
Adobe
Microsoft
Even the HP printer has updates...

And I'm sure there's more. It seems that every few days, someone wants to install an update which I wouldn't care so much about except that I have to restart my computer. And that's a pain, because I have all kinds of stuff I'm working on, and I hate having to remember what all I had pulled up so that I can go reopen it all again...and then I have to keep clicking "remind me later" over and over all day. Aaaargh! Enough Already!

Anybody know of a way around that?

I've thought of two ways:
1- A way for the computer to save all my stuff and restore it after the restart. The computer does save all my stuff,(it's called "hibernate") but a full restart cancels that out.
2-The computer could put all the updates in a bin, and do it all at once, once a month.

Am I the only one that gets aggravated by that?

I finally finished Harry Potter #7. (Post-forthcoming...) Rather sad to say goodbye to all those characters. (Though I think Rowling wrapped things up better than LOST did... ;-)

That's not the blasphemy. Keep reading.

Anyway, I just started listening to the unabridged "The Hobbit" as my follow-up to Harry Potter.

(Still not the blasphemy, but you're closer now.)

And as I listened to Gandalf banter with Bilbo I found myself wishing he was Dumbledore.

There it was.

I think that as I keep listening, I'll just think of the Hobbit and LOTR books as Dumbledore's wanderings under the pseudonymn "Gandalf" before he became headmaster at Hogwart's.

If my fellow thinklings decide to defenestrate me for this, this may be my last post. Or maybe I'll see you after the backlash...

Just give me one of these.

A few of you have noticed that the Edit button under your just-created comments is gone. This is not on purpose; there's some issue/bug on Thinklings related to this. It's only happening here, from what I can tell (haven't seen it on other Bloo blogs). And it's not affecting everyone on Thinklings, just some.

I think I know what it is, but could use some experimentation: if you're having this problem (nhe, I believe you've experienced it) and would be willing to clear your cookies and let me know if that fixes things, that would be awesome. Let me know.

New Year's Resolution: go to monthly releases of Bloo. We'll see.

Jared just explained what Twitter's all about. I was all confused before, but now it all makes sense. And I'm not even being sarcastic.

Alterable!

Well, not really. But the new version of Bloo we just upgraded to gives the poster the ability to set the post date and time (a feature we had back in the day on our other blog software, and long overdue in Bloo). I posted this one at 10:26, but set it to not show up on the blog until 10:35. Just for testing.

It's kind of like sending Einie one minute into the future.

But not really . . .

I'll be upgrading the blog within the next ten or fifteen minutes, in case you're on and things start breaking.

A merry and blessed Christmas to all.

Update: Upgrade complete. We're now on Bloo version 1.28. Now to see if everything still works . . .

You won't be able to do it.

From Tim Challies - Rich Daddy God Board Game

I triple dog dare you. You won't be able to do it. I laughed until my gut hurt.

A taste...

Timothy (in the yellow robe) is my personal favorite (and be sure to check out the picture of him on the box). This must be the face he made while Paul circumcised him. Philemon (second from the right) looks like a Mafia hit man while Barnabas (far left) looks inebriated and Paul (far right) looks like a televangelist.

This post is in reference to the leaked CRU emails.

A few notes before I launch into this: first, I am, like you probably are, a huge fan of clean air and clean water. I'm also geeking on new forms of energy, and I'm pretty much "all of the above"; let's develop our domestic supplies, lower (or eliminate) our reliance on foreign oil, develop hydrogen fuel cells, natural gas transportation fleets, wind, solar, geo-thermal, orbital solar arrays, etc. I think that stuff's cool and can only be good.

I also think it's good if we lower our emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere.

We as Christians should be good stewards of this good earth.

And . . . I don't for a moment think that we're heading for a climate disaster. I've been chicken-littled to death during my lifetime. As P.J. O'Rourke once observed, "have you ever wondered if Chicken Little had an agenda?"

One reason for my skepticism has been the reliance of AGW scientists on computer models. I am a computer scientist, and I've seen a lot of bad code in my time. And I've never seen a computer program that can predict the future.

So I was very interested to read this from Michael Williams. This is a view of the issue we're not seeing out there much, but I think it's very important. Question: just how good is the code behind those vaunted climate models?

Up to this point, it was difficult to challenge the conclusions of AGW-believing climate scientists because most geeks don't have much expertise in climatology. We tend to consider ourselves scientists and to give other scientists in other areas of expertise the benefit of the doubt. Without a great deal of experience in climatology, it's hard for a geek to justify spending much time questioning the modes and methods of professional climate researchers.

However, the email leak has changed all this. Along with a hoard of emails, some source code for the computer climate models was also hacked and released to the public -- and the source code is an unusable mess. It doesn't take expertise in climatology to look at source code and determine that the code is garbage. There are many more geeks with software expertise than with climate expertise, and the geek community will go through every line of code and likely conclude that the computer models are so flawed that any conclusions drawn on them are without merit.

Despite the liberal tendencies of many geeks, I believe that the source code evidence will be insurmountable for most. Some will continue to cling to AGW because of a devotion to left-wing politics, but the majority of geeks will abandon their belief, and that abandonment by geeks will truly spell the end for AGW.

My wife and I just started watching them on DVD about two months ago, each episode in order from blockbuster.com. We don't get the Sci-Fi channel so we'd never seen an episode before.

Wow. It's awesome. One of the best television shows ever and possibly even the best Sci-Fi show ever. ("What?!?!", you say. "Even better than LOST and Star Trek?" Yes.)

Critics have been saying since it came out that it's so good, that even non Sci-Fi fans would love it. Being a Sci-Fi fan myself, I don't know if that's true, but I believe it would be.

The writing, the acting, the characters, the story-arc - everything about this show is near perfect. Another thing I really like about the show, is that each episode is unique. Though they are all a part of the story arc, each episode is a "different kind of episode." So many TV shows (Star Trek, lawyer shows, cop shows etc...) follow a formula. In BG, every episode is so unique. You never know what you are going to get. One episode, will be about space battle. The next episode about people on a planet. The next episode will be about internal politics. The next episode about someone's relationship. One episode was about boxing! But one thing that is consistent - it's all first-class.

We just started Season 4 this week (the final season) and I'm already sad that we're almost finished. I'm really looking forward to the BG movie "The Plan" that will be released this fall.

The purpose of this post: If you've never watched it before, watch it. If you have been watching, sound off. Let's talk about it, but do give people spoiler warnings. There are lots of surprises in this show.

If you are, like me, a NASA history nerd, you might enjoy this: We Choose The Moon.

As you may know, today is the 40th anniversary of the launch of the historic Apollo 11 mission. WeChooseTheMoon.org is following the mission in real-time, minus 40 years. In other words, you can listen to the back and forth between the Apollo 11 spacecraft and mission control and track the mission progress as the mission happened, to the second, forty years ago. You can also watch videos, view photos, look at flash-renderings of the current configuration of the spacecraft, etc.

It's awesome! Today I got to listen, in "real time", to the TLI (Trans-Lunar Injection) maneuver that put the spacecraft on course for the moon. I was absolutely in Nerdvana. Listening in also makes one an audience to the more mundane moments, such as the astronauts wishing a scientist a happy birthday, or talking about what they will eat for dinner.

This Monday (minus 40 years) the Lunar Module will land in the sea of tranquility on the surface of the moon and Neil Armstrong will take that historic first step. I hope to be listening in.

[Hat tip: me]

I think I've fixed the issue with Bloglines not always displaying all the posts in the Thinklings RSS feed. The problem was, as far as I can tell, undue finickyness on Bloglines' part regarding the structures allowed in one of the XML tags in the feed. This has been fixed.

If anyone out there uses Bloglines to read Thinklings, can you let me know if the feed looks good to you now?

The fix will be going out in the next general release of Bloo.

Update - well, it's still ignoring the posts entered today. Not sure why but I'll continue doping this out.

Update 2 - actually, it seems to be working very well now. Check that one off the list!

...And A Horn!!!!