Last week I wrote about absolute truth. This week I read in the scriptures and was reminded of how we can access that truth. The “formula” is quite simple, but there are tricks in the execution. The Formula The way to gain absolute knowledge is to ask God. The scriptures say: For behold, again I say unto you that if ye will enter in by the way, and receive the Holy Ghost, it will show unto you all things what ye should do. The formula works like this: You have an honest disposition to find the truth. It doesn’t mean a biased truth, it means you want to find the…
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Absolute Truth
Is there such a thing as absolute truth? I think there is. Some people say it is found with science, but I think that reasoning is flawed. The source of absolute truth is only found outside of our realm, with God. Science is not the Answer to Everything Just because the scientific method is a good way to learn about our physical world, it does not mean that it can discover the absolute truth. Our observations are always limited to our imperfect senses. Our reasoning is biased by our backgrounds. How often has science declared something as a fact only to be laughed at 100 years later? Our Opinions are…
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My Yearly Post About Time
A couple years ago I wrote about different calendar and time systems. Interestingly, I have had my wristwatch in UTC since I wrote that post. Changing to use UTC was not as hard as I imagined. I still use it. Last week I heard about another interesting time concept, the 10,000 year clock. Their implementation is a bit crazy and useless, I thought, but the bigger thought behind it is actually interesting. 10,000-Year Clock I listened to a report on NPR about a guy (Danny Hillis) who is building a huge clock that is designed to run for 10,000 years. The whole story got crazier (not in a good sense)…
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Test-Driven Development
I just finished a three-day training course on Test-Driven Development (TDD) by Industrial Logic. It was jam packed with really great information. Luckily they gave us online access to all the material so that i can review it later. It was too much to digest in the class. I recommend that course to anyone. Often we think that TDD is simply “write the test first, see it fail, then write code until the test passes”. It is much more. How you do things actually really matters. Some major points I took from the training are: Refactoring: You have to stay green in your tests while refactoring. Yes, constantly. Make tiny,…
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Jekyll
Jekyll is a blogging framework for the software engineers. You write posts in the command line, and they appear in your blog. Granted, there are better blogging frameworks, but this is an interesting one. When you create a git repository and push it to a remote repository, you have a great system for capturing for lab notes or work journal entries. Getting Started Starting with Jekyll is simple and straight forward. As the instructions on the home page (http://jekyllrb.com/) states: ~ $ gem install jekyll ~ $ jekyll new my-awesome-site ~ $ cd my-awesome-site ~/my-awesome-site $ jekyll serve Now take care of persisting it to a git repository: ~/my-awesome-site $ git init ~/my-awesome-site $ git add . ~/my-awesome-site $ git commit -m "Initial check-in" ~/my-awesome-site $ git…
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Watching Live Internet Video on Linux With mplayer
I think mplayer is amazing. With rtmpdump and mplayer you can watch internet streaming video. This great post shows the command for several sources like CSPAN, BBC, etc. I would add my own recipe to listen to live NPR: First create a playlist file (nprlive24.pls) with the following content: NumberOfEntries=1 File1=http://npr.ic.llnwd.net/stream/npr_live24 Title1=NPR 24 Hour Program Stream Then just run mplayer: mplayer -capture -quiet -nocache -prefer-ipv4 -playlist nprlive24.pls Don’t you love mplayer?
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Starting the New Year With a Hike
I love hiking, although I am not very good at it. We have a dear friend who showed us the secrets of winter hiking, what kind of gear to use and what to expect. We even got to try snow shoes! This hike was in Alpine, along a trail that is wide. It was a good, gentle introduction for us. The important thing with enjoying the nature is that if you have the right gear, the elements won’t get to you, and you can enjoy it. many layers and tops with zippers make it easy to regulate the heat. If you wear sweaters, peeling them is hard. But if you…
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Rootstech!
Today was the first day of the RootsTech genealogy tech conference! It is the second year for Rootstech. I missed the last year because I was sick, so I was happy I could go this year. Jay Verkler’s Keynote Jay Verkler’s keynote about the future of genealogy tech was inspiring. It was streamed live, and you can see the stream for today at the front page of rootstech.org. The take away from his presentation is that it is important to cement ourselves in the history, as a friend of mine calls it. If we preserve our own history our children will have an easier job than we have trying to…
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My New Year’s Resolution (Give us our Eleven Days!!)
The tradition is to make resolutions as we transition from one year to another. This year I have been thinking really hard what resolution I would make. Anything conventional (lose weight, sleep more, read more, speak only Spanish at home, blog every day, etc.) seem so vanilla, boring, and not at all a challenge. I finally found something interesting, though. My resolution is to abandon the Gregorian calendar and adopt a better one. I would completely love a decimal calendar but it is messy. Who could handle 10-day weeks? Also, the sidereal year (365.256363 days) is not really divisible by 10. Mayan Doomsday In these times, some people might feel…
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Trans-Siberian Orchestra Concert!!!!!!
Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s (TSO) show in Salt Lake City yesterday was not a disappointment. Lasers, lights, fire, smoke, and of course the music kept us well entertained. The show was a narration of a story with a Christmas theme. Well worth the price of the tickets. It is rocking classical and Christmas music and definitely gets you going. Christmas for me has a deep meaning of Christ’s birth, and to get into the real Christmas spirit I listen to more traditional music. However, I like TSO’s style of music during the season for entertainment. They do have a good message of helping each other, sharing, understanding, and being good people. Here…
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