Author: Eric Mesa

  • Tai Shan

    When I found out a baby panda had been born at the National Zoo, I wanted to see him as soon as he was available. Unfortunately, the tickets to see him sold out right away. Now, nine months later, the tickets are largely an unnecessary formality. However, I didn’t know that when Danielle and I…

  • Lego Difference Engine

    Someone built a difference engine – the first computer ever designed by Charles Babbage – out of Legos. The difference engine is more of a calculator than a computer in that you can’t load multiple programs on it, but it was still extremely revolutionary for its time. In fact, it was only designed on paper…

  • Setting up a Virtual Computer with Xen (on Fedora) Part 1

    If you haven’t done so already, install xen by typing yum install xen This will install xen as well as taking care of any needed dependencies. Now you need the xen-enabled kernel so type yum install kernel-xen0 (That’s a zero there) While we’re waiting for that to install, it’s time to learn some Xen terminology.…

  • Two Jokes By Alvarez Guedes

    He is one of my favorite comedians so I have translated two of his jokes for you today. Enjoy! A woman walks into a pet store and tells the man at the counter, “I would like to buy your canary which sings most beautifully.” So the man at the counter comes back with a bird…

  • Jewish Reggae

    Christian Rock/Pop music has been around since the 1970s when Larry Norman pioneered the genre. Since then it has become a HUGE market encompassing all areas of music from rock to ska to punk to rap. There is a large popuplation of Jews in the US, so why wouldn’t there be Jewish music? Finally, our…

  • Lent – a quickie

    I’m not Catholic, but if I were to give something up for Lent, it would have to be my only addiction – flickr!

  • Today’s Favorite

  • Learning By Imitation

    In the sciences a pupil is taught formulas and learns to aply and adopt these to whichever situations present themselves. By contrast, artistic learning requires studying the masters and learning to imitate their techniques before being able to create a new one. By knowing the rules and how those great artists adhered to them or…

  • Today’s Favorite

  • The Views Pools on flickr.com

    Some people might look at my pictures, particularly those who are in the 400 views group and say, “so! Anyone can get to 400 views by climbing the Views bracket groups.” For the uninitiated, these are pools of pictures that start with 25 then go to 50, 100, and every hundred after that. The point…

  • Today’s Favorites

  • The Freshmen by The Verve Pipe

    Ever since I heard this song on the radio in Ithaca because my computer was broken and I had to listen to the radio to get some music, I’ve wondered what the heck the lyrics were about. I finally decided to google it and here’s what the singer, himself has to say about it. In…

  • King Chango – Venezuelan in New York

    Thought this song was pretty interesting – I had it on my computer, but hadn’t heard it in a long time. Pretty relevant to the current news stories. lyrics: No tomo te, tomo cafe mi amor Yo como arepa y pabellon Con mi sumbao machuco el English when I talk Im Venezuelan in New York…

  • Today’s Favorites

  • The Reason I’ve been ignoring my blog