Xor News

Quite possibly my best single line of code ever. Certainly my best single line of Java ever.
And it’s in a unit test.


private static String W = "Президент Буш";


What’s yours?

Dear students -

If you believe that God has allowed you access to a college education then you would want to be a good steward of that which is provided by that education. Yet, it never ceases to amaze me how many students, many very well intentioned, lose focus on the stewardship of their education and don’t nearly receive the return that they should on it. Invariably it is accountability that determines the return on your education.

Personal Financial Stewardship, Ed C. Anthony, p. 16

During the snowmageddon event of 2010 a Chinese Elm tree came down. This particular Chinese Elm was planted by my great-grandfather at the house then being built by my grandfather. The tree hadn’t been in the best of health for the last decade or so, but was a lovely tree and served well for over 60 years. Some pieces were salvaged for bowl making operations.

Here is how a rank amateur roughs out a bowl out of sopping wet elm.

At 10:30 I fired up the chainsaw and started making some flat spots on this log.

At 10:37 the blank is roughed out. Normally a bowl would not go through the heart-wood like this does but since this is a crotch section of the tree and has end-grain on all four sides I am hoping it might work out. Time will tell.

At 10:43 the blank is mounted up between centers on the Powermatic 3520b. It’s a little off center but not bad. This lathe has plenty of weight to dampen it. The blank weighs in at about 35 pounds.

At 11:03 the blank is rounded off and running true. Time to dial up the speed a little.

At 11:16 the bottom of the bowl is taking shape and a tenon is cut for the chuck jaws. Time to reverse the mount and grab it by the bottom end. It’s a little heavy to get in the chuck, fortunately my good friend Mac stops by just in time to lend a hand.

Hollowed out with a nice sharp bowl gouge. I’ve never turned anything this heavy before so I left a center post in place for tail-stock support. It may get too warped to use that when dried, but it can be cut away easily enough.

Now it just has to dry for 6 months, then go back on the lathe and get round and thin.
Lots of blanks end their lives at this stage since they are prone to severe cracking and warping.

Shoveled out and ready for action!

Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? Job 38:22, The Bible.

Several important things happen on New Year’s Day in Bible times. Today seems like a good day to point them out.

It is worth thinking about which “New Year” we are speaking of. Today we have the new calendar year, but there is also the new fiscal year, the new agricultural year, and probably others.

The situation we find in Bible times is similar: there is the regnal new year from which the length of the king’s reign is measured, the calendar new year, the religious new year (Exodus 12:2 – why isn’t Rosh Hashanah in April? Now you know.), the new year for trees (determines when you can start eating the fruit), and probably others.

Some of the New Year’s Day happenings are not necessarily or even likely the same type of year but I’m still going to appropriate them all for this post.

Noah and the End of the Great Flood

And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first [month], the first [day] of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dry. Genesis 8:13, The Bible

On the first day of the new year, Noah looked and found that the ground was dry and he was able to remove the covering from the ark. This reminds me that God is faithful to His promises. He had promised Noah His protection during the flood and now Noah is safely on the other side of the destructive deluge.

The new year is a good time to reflect on God’s goodness to each of us and to realize that He is always faithful to His promises, even when times and circumstances look dark and beyond hope.

Setting up the Hebrew Tabernacle

And it came to pass in the first month in the second year, on the first [day] of the month, [that] the tabernacle was reared up. Exodus 40:17, The Bible

The tabernacle serves as a reminder that God has chosen to be involved with life on this planet. He is not, as some have supposed, one who would up the universe in time past and since that initial infusion of energy left us all to our own devices. In describing the tabernacle and the furnishings that were to be provided for it, God indicates “And there I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat” (Exodus 25:22, The Bible).

The new year is an appropriate time to remember that God has expressed His desire to have a relationship with us. In fact, he went as far as to send Jesus Christ into this world, knowing he would suffer and be cruelly mistreated so that he could righteously offer the forgiveness of sins and welcome His wayward creatures back into a personal relationship with Himself.

The Word of the Lord comes to Ezekiel

And it came to pass in the twenty-seventh year, in the first [month], on the first [day] of the month, [that] the word of the LORD came to me… Ezekiel 19:17, The Bible

The word of the LORD came to Ezekiel many times and the day and month are very often given. This particular occasion concerns one of the greatest prophetic events in history: The battle of Tyre. This prophecy, left partially fulfilled for hundreds of years, was completely fulfilled by Alexander the Great in 322 BC, serving as a lasting monument to the authority and reliability of God’s word. God gives us prophecy because He wants us to have confidence in Him and believe Him when we see things come to pass that He has indicated beforehand (Isaiah 43:10, John 14:29).

The new year is a great time to to understand that God wants to be believed. When people characterize my faith as “blind faith” and describe it as being without reason, they do so without really looking into the matter. True Biblical faith is based on well-placed confidence in the prophetic-historical statements of the Bible as well as our personal experience with the Living God in our own lives. There’s nothing blind or unreasoning about it and I don’t find God asking for something unreasonable. In fact, he encourages us to reason with Him:

“Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the LORD, “Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool. Isaiah 1:18, The Bible

So this New Year’s Day, reflect, remember and reason. God is good, He is faithful, He wants a relationship with us and He says Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, Acts 16:31, The Bible.

In which I find a quote from an unreliable source in a book by a normally reliable author and lose much confidence in the other material contained therein.

I would be extremely hesitant to quote anything pithy or witty sounding from M. Muggeridge without pages of context around why it was necessary to do so. Perhaps even tricking a man on the street into reading the desired MM quote and then quoting the M.O.T.S. instead of MM would be preferable.

From the virgin birth

Seeing Through The Eye, page 207

To the resurrection

Seeing Through The Eye, page 22

The poison behind the nice sounding witticisms is laid bare.

Here are some that are noteworthy and funny:

• Is it Christmas – http://isitchristmas.com – Funny as it tracks the timezones across the globe, really only has much to do on one day per year though. But that one day is coming up soon, so start checking in daily.
• Is it Dark Outside – http://isitdarkoutside.com – Whopping funny. Works every day of the year.
• Umbrella Today – http://umbrellatoday.com – I guess they are hawking an iPhone app, but I really enjoyed how the interface pulls you in a little bit at a time. And if you visit for the first time on a rainy day (or just put in a Seattle, Washington zip code), that rainy-day graphic is stunning.

It’s all about hiding the complexity. Do something hard with your software but don’t make the users suffer just you did.

Autumn color.

A recent tweet from my pal #eknock complaining about some juicy ORA-06550: line 1, column 7 reminded me of these error codes that an old-cgi script of min produces:

• Bad disktype code ORA-99xxx
• CTXUSER not enabled ORA-010xxx
• Flagellular misfire ORA-910xxx
• Nascent order lost code: ORA-82xxx
• Ferrule injector not found: ORA-14xxx

Of course it’s just a perl script and the system had nothing to do with Oracle. Just one of those little things that can be done to throw snoopers off the trail.

Yesterday I attended the first-ever Hadoop World, sponsored by Cloudera and held in The Roosevelt Hotel in New York City. I took an early Amtrak train up to the big city and a late train back that same night. The conference was well attended, over 500 big-data heads were there and the organizers did a fantastic job.

Some of the best stuff was just hearing about how other folks are using Hadoop. I also enjoyed hearing about the sizes of other people’s big-data problems. There were three tracks, so I only heard 1/3 of what took place, but here are some notes on what I did hear after the break.

It was a great day, a long day, glad I went. (more…)