Xor News

Mamacita made paella last night and it was truly fantastic. It was very authentic, real spanish short grained rice, chorizo, jamon, shrimp, scallops, chicken, smoked Spanish paprika, saffron. There is a certain kind of pepper that true Valencian paella would have that we didn’t find in time, but I’m thinking that just gives us an excuse to have it again pretty soon, right? Right?

Paella de Valencia

So here it is, probably enough paella for 12 people. My new favorite food has displaced Maryland crab-cakes from the top of the list.

The boy wonder graduates! Way to go, d00d!

The Boy Wonder Graduates

This screen cast covers Scaling Rails apps using Rack and Metal and is an execellent tutorial on both subjects. Jason Pollack, one of the Rails Envy guys, does a superb job explaining how rack and metal work in Rails 2.3.

Last night we concluded watching the DVD of the Does God Exist? debate between William Lane Craig (affirm) and Christopher Hitchens (deny). The debate was sponsored by the Biola University apologetics department and took place on the Biola campus in Southern California. The debate format was classical and some questions were taken from the student section of the audience at the end.

I have read several of Dr. Craig’s books before and have enjoyed them, especially on Jesus Resurrection, Fact or Figment?, a debate in book form with Gerd Ludemann.

We appreciated many of the points made during the debate on both sides. One can particularly sympathize with Mr. Hitchens comments on the banality of man-made religion and the damage, heart-break, and destruction it has caused. It is sad that so many have done so much evil in the name of Christianity. The earthly church attempting to gain political power and be able to “tell people what to do in the name of God” we find a particularly repugnant form of man-made addition to true Christianity. But as Dr. Craig concludes, we ultimately believe Christianity and that there is a God because it is true, not because of the potential or actual benefits to society from holding this world-view.

Debate video highly recommended.

Reading an interesting paper on d-Left Hashing (pdf link) by Bonomi, Mitzenmacher, et. al. This is a space and effeciency improvement on Bloom filters. Wondering how it could be incorporated into a Hadoop mapfile to avoid scanning compressed blocks for keys that aren’t present. Maybe the work in hbase on o.a.h.hbase.io.BloomFilterMapFile would provide good clues. Need to understand the dynamic bit reassignment stuff first though.