YakNet

Wow—even Nepalese yak farmers are getting Wifi. This whole Internet thing is really catching on, wouldn’t you say?

Kids these days

Essays are a wonderful form of knowledge: http://douglas.min.net/essay/newessay.jpg. Thanks for the link, Dan.

Top Ten

Posting a list of your top ten books seems to be the thing to do nowadays. Note that these are not necessarily my favorite books, just the ones that have influenced me the most.

1. The Cosmic Trilogy: Lewis’s science fiction series has shown me a great deal about Christian cosmology. It also shows which parts modern science fiction has gotten wrong and which it is right about.


2. Farenheit 451: This one scared me when I read it. I had read distopian novels like 1984, but they hadn’t seemed plausible to me the way Bradbury did. I saw the future portrayed within as inevitable. (And in some ways still do.) Reading it makes me want to read more.


3. The Chronicles of Narnia: Delightful to a child’s imagination, these books can still fill me with awe and remind me of important truths. “Aslan is not a tame Lion.”


4. The Foundation Trilogy: I read these in junior high, and Asimov’s arguments concerning fate and determinism has stuck with me ever since.


5. The Divine Comedy: Dante is Christendom’s best poet, and his masterpiece is so full of good stuff in so many fields it’s almost unbearable. I still can’t read it as it deserves to be read.


6. Ecclesiastes: My favorite book of the Bible reminds me like The Dream of Scipio that life on Earth is fleeting and its pursuits should not be our focus.


7. A Severe Mercy: Vanauken paints such a vivid picture of joy, love, and sacrafice that it is almost too much to behold.


8. Le Morte d’ Arthur: I wish life could be more like this book.


9. The Confessions of St. Augustine: Augustine is my favorite saint. His autobiography first showed me how passion and intellectual pursuit interplay in Christianity.


10. The Lord of the Rings: This book first taught me how to face evil even in the onset of despair. I admire Theoden’s determination and tenacity. It also showed me how a cause like the West can be worth fighting for.

Honorable mention: The Discarded Image, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Ender’s Game, Tom Swift series, The Geography of Thought, Snow Crash, The Man who was Thursday, Dune, Dandelion Wine, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Two questions

One: what exactly is a number one pencil?

Two: why is it so much less useful than a number two pencil?

...thence we came forth to see again the stars.

My Calculus class isn’t actually done yet; I still have to take the exam. Still, the fact that I never will have to listen to another word from the professor of that infernal class gives me great joy. Great misfortune still may befall me, but I will always be able to take comfort in the fact that at least it’s not Calculus class. Huzzah.

Fun with Feminism

Feminist: Men and women should be treated as equals in all situations.

Gentleman: But men should act differently around women; they should strive to behave well and not to offend them with harsh language.

Feminist: Not so! Women and men are equal. I demand to be offended.

Gentleman: But don’t you see, m’dear: you are.

Civil Disobedience, anyone?

Become an international arms trafficker!

http://online.offshore.com.ai/arms-trafficker/

I’m researching ridiculous laws, in case you couldn’t tell.
It’s almost comical.

I have a fanboy.... No wait, I am a fanboy....

Woot:

On Fri, 14 May 2004 17:39:28 -0700
“John Reynolds” wrote:

> [...] You are a web god and I long to be like you.
>
> JMNR
>

The Law and idiots

I’m doing some research for my paper on protecting digital rights, and one of the main offenders happens to be the ever-inopportune DMCA. Section 117 of the law legislates when copies of software may be made: one (1) copy may be made for archival purposes when the software is obtained.


This has been the case for some time; it just clarified the CSCA from 1980. It seems pretty reasonable—one backup copy should be enough. Unfortunately this fails to take into account the fact that backups have to be done regularly if they are to be useful. So it turns out that backing up your hard drive which contains proprietary software is illegal—you only have the right to back up your program once: when you first obtain the software.

As if that weren’t enough, the DMCA also clarifies that copies of software and other digital material that are stored in RAM are also subject to the original copyright holder’s right of reproduction. That means it would be illegal for you to load up two copies of your proprietary program at the same time! This happens all the time in the case of servers. With Apache, the web server that runs about 70% of the web, each time someone connects to the web server, it spawns another copy of the program. Under the DMCA, if Apache weren’t open source, you would have to buy it over and over again for each concurrent viewer of the web site.

Needless to say, I don’t think I’m going to have a hard time coming up with digital rights abominations in the DMCA. Should be a relatively easy paper, unfortunately.

Dale Owen Strikes Again!

The reason I’ve been slack in posting lately:


http://www.johnmarkreynolds.com


Now with added blog value!

BSD Pilgrimage

I’m going to Torrey Berkeley at the beginning of the summer, which is just going to rule so much…. The campus there is just beautiful and sadly, it shames Biola. We’ll be reading a book a day, focusing on the lives of great saints of the past.
Yes, it’s going to rule.

I was looking at the Berkeley Computer Science page and thought it was pretty funny that their instructions to build your own web page assumed a knowledge of Unix filesystems, but no knowledge of HTML. Then again, this is the birthplace of BSD, so perhaps it ought to be some kind of CompSci Mecca.

Deconstructing Troy

Thanks to Micah Snell—

Achilles Pitt:

• “The first rule of Greek Fight Club is I refuse to fight in Greek Fight
  Club.”
  
  Hector Bana:
  


• “Don’t make him angry…I really won’t like him if you make him angry.”
  


• “I don’t care if Achilles is from the Styx. I’ve got his number.”
  


• “Finally equal billing with an Achaean! Nobody ever pays attention to
  the temperate man.”
  


• “The older brother always has to bail the younger one out.”
  
  Paris Bloom:
  


• “Achaeans? Who cares about freakin’ Achaeans? I slew a freakin’
  oliphaunt in my last flick. I’m self-confident enough to just be the
  whiny pretty boy.”
  


• “Wow, Helen is almost as beautiful as me.”
  


• “In a few thousand years some scampy chick is going to give people named
  Paris a bad reputation.”
  
  Menelaus Gleeson:
  


• “My favorite movie scene is the one where Orlando Bloom falls out of the
  Blackhawk and dies in the first 3 minutes of the film.”
  


• “Sparta always gets the bum rap. No one likes us as much as Athens. Oh
  well, could be worse, nobody’s ever heard of Mycenae.”
  
  Agamemnon Cox:
  


• “The older brother always has to bail the younger one out.”
  


• If I didn’t get first pick of the spoils this trip would suck for me as
  much as it does for all the other Achaeans.”
  
  Helen Kruger:
  


• “If I only had a brain…”
  


• “There are so many studs around here I think I’ll flirt with whichever
  one is closest.”
  


• “I got to kiss Orlando!”
  


• “Good thing I’m beautiful, otherwise I wouldn’t have a single thing
  going for me.”
  
  Priam O’Toole:
  


• “I’ve got so many descendants I should seriously consider becoming
  Mormon.”
  


• “How the heck did I get roped into such an imbecilic gig? I feel like
  Alec Guiness in Star Wars IV.”
  
  Odysseus Bean:
  


• “The horse is a gift! We can turn it to our own purposes.”
  


• “Armand Assante eat your heart out.”
  


• “What a load of oafs I’m allied with. I could really use some lotus
  right about now.”
  


• “Do well at the box office do well at the box office do well at the box
  office do well at the box office”
  
  Aeneas Fitzgerald:
  


• “Good thing I’m not of Priam’s bloodline. Somebody’s gotta bring
  redemption out of this whole fiasco.”
  


• “All the really cool people in this saga will get their own sequel.”
  


• “All the really really cool people in this saga will sire their own
  empire.”
  


• “Do well at the box office do well at the box office do well at the box
  office do well at the box office”
  
  The Muse:
  


• “Hey wait a minute! Why weren’t we consulted on this?”
  
  Diomedes:
  


• “You’d think the most prominent Achaean warrior in the first half of the
  story could at least get cast in the movie.”
  
  Keira Knightley:
  


• “I’m not Helen?”
  
  Homer:
  


• “It’s a good thing I’m blind and I don’t have to see the movie”
  
  
  So, will it be good?
  

Ive been Googled!ve been Googled!

Lots of people hit my site by finding it on Google. Here are some of the searches through which people have come:

• real ultimate power wikipedia ninja


• andre arko


• grant turck


• knights of iluvatar


• engaged last night


• la vita nuova dante aligheri


• lem malabuyo


• helpful xanga sites [lol!]


• jobs for highschoolers


• biola blog


• biola university linux


• john mark reynolds blog


• bahamut lagoon pictures


• glorfindel bio and photos [!!!]


• shrunken heads pictures


• pictures of guthwine


• engagement pictures at the beach


• brian breed blog

Unfortunately, I think most people coming to the site through these searches didn’t find what they were looking for. Hopefully they still enjoyed themselves and perused the content though.