Category: My Own Words

Hosting My Own Things

Lately, I have been interested in seeing how much of what I do online could be hosted by myself, on my own server, in my house. It’s also a good excuse to play with virtual machines and generally be nerdy. To that end, I have imported my entire Tumblr blog to this WordPress site that I built and am hosting myself. Hooray.

On Religion and Ignorance

I recently read a post by a student at a Christian university regarding philosophy. There were some statements made about learning about “opposing viewpoints such as the Big Bang theory.” The author went on to make erroneous comments about molecules evolving and “the universe, the sun, and everything in it would have already died” by the time life had evolved. Here are some issues I have with the post:

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A New Mac for Less Than $200

If anyone has a slow MacBook, read on to learn how to have a new Mac for less than $200. I had a 2010 MacBook that I began using last year when my brother bought a new iMac and stopped using the laptop. It was unbearably slow. I am used to my desktop, which is a Mac Pro with the following specs: Processors: Two quad-core hyper-threading 2.26 GHz Intel Xeons (16 virtual cores)

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The Transit of Venus

Yesterday, a rare astronomical event happened: Venus crossed in front of the sun. I was able to see this personally, and several interesting facts occurred to me. First, watch this 3 minute video from NASA. It was recorded by the Solar Dynamics Observatory in orbit above the Earth. Watch in HD if you can. Let’s start with the sun. In this video, one can easily make out the boiling surface of the sun and the magnetic storms that brighten it with loops of plasma many times larger than the Earth.

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The Power of “I’d Like That”

In the early morning of March 20th, 2010, I returned home from spring break with Taylor, Hannah, and Elizabeth. I had liked Elizabeth for three years, and our week together had given me the excuse to invite her to spend more time with me. I asked something like “Do you want to hang out tomorrow?” Although I cannot remember the exact words I used, I remember her response clearly: “I’d like that.

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End of the Shuttle Era

Space Shuttle Atlantis began her final descent from space this morning at 4:49, Eastern Daylight Time when her engines were fired to drop her back into Earth’s atmosphere. Just over an hour later, her wheels touched the tarmac at Kennedy Space Center. She was the oldest Orbiter in the shuttle fleet after the losses of Challenger and Columbia, and was the last to visit space. The Shuttle Fleet was designed in the early 1970s, and the first operational flight was in 1982.

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Technology + Space Fact of the Day

STS-135, the final space shuttle mission that lifted off successfully yesterday, is carrying an iPhone 4 into space for the first time. The astronauts will use the iPhone to assess the phone’s abilities to navigate in space. The iPhone 4 has a three-axis gyroscope, and three accelerometers, which means that it has more ways to sense where it is than the Apollo Command Module which guided men to the moon from 1969 to 1972.

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Overview of the Past Year

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The Beginning

I’m not entirely sure what this will become. It is starting as a way to keep up with a few people that I care about. I imagine it will also serve as a place for things that I find interesting that don’t really go anywhere else, which means they might be random and pointless. Heads up: I like computers, the Internets, and the space, so I’ll try to explain anything that might be too technical for someone who doesn’t find these areas as interesting as I do.

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