Original ExistDifferently.com Weblog of David, a Christian Network and Systems Manager, with topics ranging from Apologetics to Worldview, and some crypto, open source, programming, opinion, and daily life thrown in between.

Thu, 2004-12-16 (Dec 16)

Firefox Ad Hits New York Times!

Filed under: Blog,Mozilla,Open Source,Tech (General),World News — David @ 03:35

This may be one of the few times I can agree with something in the New York Times…figures it would be an ad :-) Anyway, over at “spreadfirefox.com”:http://www.spreadfirefox.com they’ve posted the “announcment about the ad”:http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=node/view/8769 and of course “Robert Accettura beat me to posting”:http://robert.accettura.com/archives/2004/12/15/firefox-ad-is-out-2-full-pages/ about it becuase I wasn’t at the computer to catch the post!

Check it out though, my name’s in the ad somewhere! Also…a nice surprise is that the ad is two pages in size instead of the promised/expected single page!

Update: I found my name in the PDF…it’s down to the right of the light “x” in Firefox at the bottom of the first page. About a third of the way above the center of the “x” and over a little ways to the right (not touching the “x” and separated by some names). The names are alphabetical, and my last name starts with “Sz”. So far I’m not directly giving it away on this blog though…some of my readers know me though :-) (If you do, please don’t post it in the comments…thanks.)

Tue, 2004-12-14 (Dec 14)

Firefox’s Google homepage…a ’suggest’ion?

Now that “Google Suggest Beta”:http://labs.google.com/suggest has been released, and seems to work really well…why not add it to the “Mozilla Firefox Start Page”:http://www.google.com/firefox that Google hosts? Then I wouldn’t have to choose between leaving the nice Firefox start page (my current choice) and Google Suggest set as my home page. Google can go ahead and add the Suggest technology to its main homepage, too, as far as I’m concerned!

Now if they would just listen to me…

Thu, 2004-12-09 (Dec 09)

The Site Now Exists Differently!

Filed under: Blog,General — David @ 13:26

Another name change! Based on an excellent suggestion (that he didn’t know he was suggesting for this purpose at the time) from Pastor Nathan at my church, in “this sermon”:http://resources.christianity.com/lakeview/talkInfo.jhtml?id=53614, I’ve picked a new name for my blog. Instead of the previous “Riddle Wrapped Up In an Enigma”, which although cool was also somewhat clumsy and nondescriptive, the new name is “Exist Differently”. Along with the new name comes a new domain: existdifferently.com

Finally, the guy who owns forty domain names buys a real one for his blog! :-)

Thu, 2004-11-25 (Nov 25)

Happy Thanksgiving

Filed under: Blog,General — David @ 15:47

Happy Thanksgiving!

Just thought I’d say that today, since I’m not sure if I feel like spending any more time here right now. Time off is good! I’m thankful for lots of stuff, but I don’t really feel like listing it on a public site this year. If you want to “see what others are thankful for”:http://www.worldmagblog.com/blog/archives/010848.html, it may be a bit more entertaining…

Sun, 2004-11-21 (Nov 21)

Porn Worse than Crack?

Filed under: Blog,Christianity,In The News,Worldviews — David @ 23:25

Wired magazine put up an article Friday called “Internet Porn: Worse than Crack?”:http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,65772,00.html that talks about the addictiveness of pornography. Since it “…causes release of the naturally occurring opioids. It does what heroin can’t do, in effect.”, and because unlike a drug it doesn’t go away over time (“Pornography addicts have a more difficult time recovering from their addiction than cocaine addicts, since coke users can get the drug out of their system, but pornographic images stay in the brain forever”).

The article also talks about the dangers of the newfound purvasiveness of this era of internet accessability (note that this is in no way an argument by me for less Internet…the Internet is awesome and just like I won’t stop reading “World Magazine”:http://www.worldmag.com/ because Playboy is also a magazine, I won’t stop visiting the good websites even though bad ones exist). Here’s that part of the article:

Mary Anne Layden, co-director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Cognitive Therapy, called porn the “most concerning thing to psychological health that I know of existing today.”

“The internet is a perfect drug delivery system because you are anonymous, aroused and have role models for these behaviors,” Layden said. “To have drug pumped into your house 24/7, free, and children know how to use it better than grown-ups know how to use it — it’s a perfect delivery system if we want to have a whole generation of young addicts who will never have the drug out of their mind.”

Of course they go on to quote from a morally relativistic person who complains that porn isn’t always bad, it just has bad effects sometimes. I shouldn’t really have to answer this, if you’re a Christian and you don’t know why porn is bad for the whole culture (not to mention sinful), you might want to start “researching”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=davidsworldva-20&path=tg%2Fdetail%2F-%2F1581344589%2Fqid%3D1100916383%2Fsr%3D8-1%2Fref%3Dsr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14%3Fv%3Dglance%26s%3Dbooks%26n%3D507846 your “worldview”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=davidsworldva-20&path=ASIN%2F0842318089%2Fqid%3D1100919008%2Fsr%3D2-1%2Fref%3Dpd_ka_b_2_1 a bit more, because arguments are rather useless if they come from a worldview other than your own.

Neal Stephenson: more books for me to read!

Filed under: Blog,Books,Entertainment,General,Tech (General) — David @ 21:08

Over at the BoingBoing.net blog, there’s a nice entry about Neal Stephenson’s “Baroque Cycle Trilogy”:http://www.boingboing.net/2004/11/21/neal_stephensons_sys.html of books that it looks like I might have to check out now. I really enjoyed his “Cryptonomicon”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060512806/davidsworldva-20?dev-t=mason-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2. Looks like these three are REALLY long though! Wonder how long it will take me to have the time to read them? Let’s just say I’ll probably check only one at a time out of the library! The books are “Quicksilver”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060593083/davidsworldva-20?dev-t=mason-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2, followed by “The Confusion”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060733357/davidsworldva-20?dev-t=mason-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2 and “The System of the World”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060523875/davidsworldva-20?dev-t=mason-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2.

Branding – trying to name my blog

Filed under: Blog,General — David @ 20:41

Still working on a name for my blog. Not sure if I like the riddle/enigma name. Maybe. But I found a “cool blog”:http://ries.typepad.com/ries_blog/ by Laura Ries, apparently a pretty big PR-type person who has been on the national news channels and stuff. Interesting stuff on marketing, and there’s a certain post on “naming products”:http://ries.typepad.com/ries_blog/2004/09/what_makes_a_go.html, too. Maybe it’ll have some ideas I can use for my blog (I haven’t read it yet…this entry serves as a good bookmark though :-)

Sat, 2004-11-20 (Nov 20)

I Am A Mindwriter

Filed under: Blog — David @ 03:04

I am a mind writer. A verbal mindwriter. No, not the kind that can tell others what to think (if only!). It’s the way I think. I dictate thoughts in my mind, and they are always well-orgainzed (okay, usually), and edited and “sound” great. Then I sit in front of a computer, or turn on an audio-recording device, and wham, it’s gone. Just like that. Usually the general idea is there, but I often don’t get past the first sentence or two, if that, before the eloquent stream of consciousness I had carefully crafted vanishes into oblivion.

Thought-processes, figuring out how we think about the world and how we logically (or not) come to the conclusious we all reach as individuals about certain topics, based on our past experiences, personalities, and other assorted mental pathways, have always interested me. Personality profiles, political views…worldviews, when you get down to it.

Part of that is how we communicate. It’s interesting to read about others views on how they write, for example. What their initial process is, how they correct misspellings when they type (do they immediately catch, backspace and fix the error, or do they keep going and edit later). Do they let go of their first draft of something, or review and edit. Do they pre-edit in their mind, manipulating words into phrases or sentences before laying them down on “paper,” or do they just lay down words as fast as they can type (or write, for those odd, old-fashioned folks) and make sense of it all later?
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riddle wrapped up in an enigma

Filed under: Blog,Crypto,General — David @ 01:40

I’m trying out a new title for my blog, “riddle wrapped up in an enigma.” It was originally “david’s worldview & tech,” which does describe the purpose of the site but isn’t exactly a unique, catchy name. I’m not sure about this one yet. I’ll leave it up for a while. Let me know if you like it, or have a better (or heck, even worse) suggestion.

The reason I chose it, other than the fact that I think it’s cool, is that it kind’ve implies layers of concealment, which is more relavant when you know that I love codes and ciphers. I used to check out every book on them I could find at the library (there are a lot!), read them in a couple of weeks, and go back for more. Of course I did this with a lot of books, but this was one of my favorite topics. I love cryptograms, ciphers, encoding schemes…not so much working them myself, but reading about how they work and the cleverness involved. The secrecy was always attractive too, not so much for preventing others from knowing something, but secrecy for secrecy itself, just the power of being able to reveal or not reveal selectively.

Of course there were a lot of codes and ciphers making their way around the world back when Churchill (see below) coined this phrase. Many books from the library, which I may review someday, about them. But perhaps most important is that it contains the word Enigma, which was of course the famous “crypto-machine”:http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/enigma/ of the Germans that was broken by the Allies back in the 1920s and 30s. Of course I’m paternally Polish (my paternal grandmother came to the US from Poland), so the fact that “Polish mathmaticians”:http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/virtualbp/poles/poles.htm were able to decipher the Enigma machines for a while in the late 1930s may have something to do with my interest there :-)

If you’re interested in European codebreaking efforts during World War II, there’s some good info at “Bletchley Park and its Museum”:http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/bletchleypark/index.htm.

By the way, the author of the quote that bit of verbiage comes from is Winston Churchill, according to “GuruNet.com”:http://www.gurunet.com/t1-deid-847632942-dsid-1974-curtab-1974_1-method-5, apparently he said, “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” back in 1939. I did use the modified version, without the “mystery.” It seemed to make the title too long. In fact I’m considering making the title even shorter. Maybe “riddle in an enigma,” or even just, “riddle enigma.”

Worst part about my new title so far: it’s hard to pronounce! You try to say “wrapped up in an enigma” five times fast! Or, is this the best part? You have to really mean to say it if you want to!

Thu, 2004-11-18 (Nov 18)

Blogger Code

Filed under: Blog — David @ 18:24

Yet another survey-type thingy. But I liked the “Geek Code”:http://www.geekcode.com/ (don’t remember mine, but I calcuated it at one point) and someone took the time to make a matching Blogger Code since a “friend did”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/librarygal/123819.html?nc=1. So here’s mine:

“B1 d++ t+ k s u– f i+ o x- e- l c+”:http://travis.kroh.net/blogger_decoder/?code=B1%20d%2B%2B%20t%2B%20k%20s%20u–%20f%20i%2B%20o%20x-%20e-%20l%20c%2B (the link is to a decoder)

Of course I would be remiss if I didn’t let you “make your own”:http://www.leatheregg.com/bloggercode/!

What? I am NOT Apple DOS 3.1!

Filed under: Blog,Funny — David @ 12:01

I don’t usually bother, but I was kind of curious when a friend had it on her “blog”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/librarygal/126835.html and was Palm OS (my fav PDA OS), so I tried it out: (more…)

Sat, 2004-11-13 (Nov 13)

Now I’ve Got A Good Template!

Filed under: Blog,General,In The News,Mozilla — David @ 05:18

Thanks to Neil’s Weblog Templates for the awesome template I’ve switched to! No more default WordPress template for me!

He’s got a good Mozilla Category going at his site as well…pretty cool! He’s got some good comments about the 1 million downloads mark being reached for Firefox 1.0 in 24 hours after launch! Look, ma, another exclamation point!

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