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 and wasn’t actually built until the 1990s!

Here’s the link to the Lego Difference Engine…. raw geekage at its best!

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. Xen causes all operating systems to run virtualized. This is why we need the xen kernel. It’s also why Xen is not available on Windows XP- you can’t virtualize an OS that doesn’t expect to be virtualized. However, there is still a primary OS and then a series of guest OSes, depending upon how many OSes you want to run and how much RAM you have. The primary OS is domain 0 and is referred to as dom0 online and pretty much everywhere I’ve read about Xen. All guest OSes are called domU. The first one is called dom0 because programmers start counting with 0. The guests are called domU because U stands for unpriveledged. Unpriviledged means they can’t reboot the physical computer and other such restrictions. Done? Good!

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 and tells her, “this bird sings more beautifully than any other canary. It sings so beautifully that I cannot sell it for less than $1500.” She thought this was a lot, but for a bird that sang that well, she was willing to pay the price.

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 country has put enough of our prejudices aside that I heard Matisyahu’s single “King Without a Crown” on the pop radio station here in the Baltimore Area.

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

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 broke them, the student gains a greater understanding.

My own learning by imitation began with the internet and the homepage. I would navigate to one which looke dneat, view the source, consult my OReilly HTML book, and figure out how to do it myself. Flickr has had a similar effect on opening my mind to new possibilities.

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 of the group is that a photo with at least 25 views is placed in the 25 group and when it outgrows that group, it moves on to 50 and so on and so forth.