I'm really enjoying my time here at JAARS in Waxhaw, NC and I've enjoyed learning about Use Cases, Python, and more. I'm considering applying to come back here next summer. :)

Let me know of any problems you run into as I try to migrate all the websites that I host to a new web server (which I've run for a few months and I'll have more control over).

Sorry for the unplanned downtime! I'm not sure what went wrong with my old web host. It seems like it may have been an upgrade that didn't go very well.

Update:

After thinking about it, and realizing that my RapidVPS server might get overwhelmed and I want to switch away from RapidVPS as soon as I need more ram (because cheaper elsewhere), I've decided to switch to Linode now instead of later. It's $20/month for 360mb of ram.

So one more server move! ;) I'll try to get everything back up this weekend

Before I start homework today I have some stuff I want to do (including writing a letter back to my wonderful sister Anna and blogging about exciting happenings! :). I really like working out of my room since it allows me to focus more on what I want to accomplish. :)

I'm currently listening to KVNE 89.5 FM: Encouragement FM on my mp3 player.

:)

I'd forgotten how amazingly encouraging that music with words can be!!! :) KVNE seems especially encouraging. It's living up to it's name!

I just heard this really good song: (taken from a life change..)

“i wrote a letter today
and what i wrotewas my own obituary
‘cause from the graveyard of self
You have resurrected me
i sing Jesus
You have changed the way i do everything
You have changed the way i see everything
with You i begin
every day the same
and i’m gonna drink deep
that is why i came
‘cause truth is a river flowing
renewal for your mind
let it set your heart free
the way that it did mine…
looked in the mirror today
and what i saw was not the same as yesterday
‘cause more and more You’re
transforming and rearranging me
You have changed the way i do everything
You have changed the way i wear my wedding ring
You have changed the way i treat my family
You have changed the way i see all my friends
You have changed the way that i spend my time
You have changed the way that i use my mind
You have changed the things i spend money on
You have changed everything i ever thought was mine
You have changed my emotions, You have steadied me
You have changed my eyes and what i let them see
You have changed the course of my history
thank God, You’re still changing me!…” 

~ “changed”… by phil joel

God is good!

I have finally gotten around to uploading pictures and Videos from the Spring Break camping trip I went on with family and friends.

You can view the fun videos here:

• http://new.elijahlofgren.com/uploads/videos/2008-spring-camping/

You can view the pictures individually here (thanks to my sister Miriam for uploading them):

• Miriam's Public Gallery » 2008-03 Camping Elijah Camera - part 1
• Miriam's Public Gallery » 2008-03 Camping Elijah Camera - Part 2

You can download all the pictures in 7 different zip files here:

• http://new.elijahlofgren.com/uploads/images/spring-camping-2008/

Have a great weekend! :)

Happy New Year!

God has really blessed me over this past year. For that, I am truly grateful because I deserve no good thing.

My second and third semesters at LeTourneau University went very well and much better academically than I expected. I still think I need to learn to be more social and talk more. I guess it just takes practice and work to think about what to say. Or, perhaps, it's fine to be mostly quiet. People don't to seem to mind it. They seem to dislike the opposite opposite.

I had a great summer! I attended New Attitude with my sisters Miriam and Lydia. I really enjoyed the encouragement, praise and worship music, and challenges from the speakers at New Attitude.

I was blessed with the wonderful opportunity to participate in the 2007 Google Summer of Code. As part of the program, I was paid to work from home on improving the usability of SilverStripe CMS (more info on my work). In addition to implementing many small suggestions from a usability report, I enjoyed adding things like drag and drop file moving.

I enjoyed learning much more AJAX and meeting many new people through GSoC. It was a pleasure to work and interact with Sigurd, Sean, Sam, Andrew, Will, Tim, and other members of the SilverStripe team. I also enjoyed working with other SilverStripe GSoC students including Will Scott, Lakshan Perera, Mateusz Ujma, Quin Hoxie, Markus Lanthaler, and Bernat Foj Capell.

Last semester, for my Data Structures presentation I shared about AJAX and Google Summer of Code. I wanted to share with other computer science students in my class about the things I had worked on over the summer and the amazing opportunity of Google Summer of Code. I enjoyed GSoC so much that I plan to apply to be a part of Google Summer of Code 2008! :)

In addition to interacting via forums, email, and text chat, I had the exciting opportunity to meet two of the co-founders of SilverStripe and another SilverStripe GSoC student in person. On Wednesday, July 25, 2007 I flew out of Montgomery, AL and landed in Portland, OR where I attended the O'Reilly Open Source Convention 2007 (OSCON 2007). In addition to attending many interesting presentations and enjoying the many booths in the expo center, I met Sigurd Magnusson, Sam Minn�e, Will Scott, and Leslie Hawthorn, Google's Open Source Programs Manager at the Summer of Code meet up. I had a great time and enjoyed meeting other open source enthusiasts for the first time.

On January 7th, 2008 I will head back to Longview, Tx to begin my fourth semester at LeTourneau University as I work towards a degree in Computer Science and Engineering.

I pray that as I enter a new year, I will learn to keep a proper perspective on life. In addition, I need and want to focus more on others and less on myself.

I'm very thankful for my family and friends and pray that I will have a positive impact on their lives.

May God bless you in 2008 as each day brings all who have accepted Jesus as their personal Saviour closer to eternity in Heaven.

Rob now has a blog: Rob in Space. :)

Found this in the Heroes of Today forums: Opinion: Global Warming Fears Overblown - Leadership and the Environment - MSNBC.com

It seems like a reasonable approach to global warming.

1. Get a good night's sleep
2. Exercise

I did both of those today and I feel much better than I did yesterday when I didn't do them. I plan to strive to continue to do them.

ALABAMA VOICES: Hail high court's abortion ruling By Julian McPhillips

Interesting headline today. From Why should we have eight hours' sleep?:

A survey is suggesting that only a tiny minority of us are getting eight hours' sleep a night. But do we really need that much?

Indeed, it's true that some people need more or less sleep than others.

I like listening to Word of Truth radio while doing homework. I especially like they piano songs. I'm listening to the hymn He is Lord right. It's wonderful.

There's just something about a Hymns played on a piano that is so relaxing.

What is your opinion of the piano? Do like it a lot too?

We make them everyday.
But how often do we pray?

It's not often in the words we say
But our actions really show the way.

Do we care?
If so, we'll share.

We'll share our thoughts and dreams
Even if often it's silly that many of them seems

How do you describe the thoughts inside your head?
Is it possible to really describe them in what you've said?

Try as you might, this is what you'll find.
Thoughts are less important than the mind.

What do you think most about?
What do you use to figure life out?

Who or what rules in your head?
Is it one about whom you've read?

How do you choose what is right?
You can't do it alone, try as you might.

You need to go take a look.
Take a look at God's instruction book.

The Bible gives meaning to the decisions you make
It encourages you to take:

One day at a time.
Don't worry, the number of your days are mine.

Give your heart away;
So that you can say:

I've chosen to be God's child.
Now my fears no longer run wild.

Choose this day whom you will serve.
You've been given what you don't deserve.

Life can be taken away in a night.
Take the next 5 minutes and choose what's right.

Then you can say
I've made the right decision, come what may.

From Balls used to plug Java mud flow:

Indonesian engineers have lowered the first series of concrete balls into a mud volcano to try to plug an eruption which has destroyed thousands of homes.

When peace like a river, attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say, It is well, it is well, with my soul. It is well, with my soul, It is well, with my soul, It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Great words: Read More

Yesterday, I finished Physics homework at 2 AM. It was nice to work together with a bunch of people from the Quad.

Next, I filled 5 to 6 pages with text (i.e. very low quality writing) until 3:36 AM in order to have a full length draft for peer reviews for my English Paper (due 1 week from today).

I awoke at 7 AM in order to get some breakfast before going to Glaske to do final testing on our Robot.

Thankfully our testing worked well and at 9:55 AM, the demonstration started and we volunteered to go 1st. Of the 10 groups in our section, we were 1 of 2 groups to score all 3 shots. I will post a video and pictures later on once Eric gets back from his Chem lab midterm.

After our Legos demo I went straight to an excellent, entertaining, interesting, informative, extra credit Physics seminar given by Dr. James L. Marshall on the topic of History of the elements. What's really cool is that Dr Marshall is the only one in the world with a collection of all the elements.

Right after the seminar was over I hurried to SAGA and gobbled down 2 pieces of pizza and then hurried to English Comp class arriving about 1-2 minutes late.

Right after English Comp, I headed over to Physics and then afterwards came back here to my room and started writing this blog post.

I heard some really good news! Opportunity for extra credit in Physics Lab (given by Dr. Ball):

I will be conducting a small star-gazing event this evening here on campus somewhere near Glaske, if the weather remains clear. I'll post a note in the lobby to indicate where we've set up. We'll have an 8" telescope and some binoculars. Tonight's features include the Moon, Saturn, the Orion Nebula, the Pleiades cluster, and the Beehive cluster. I'll make it worth 2 lab points if you come out and spend at least 30 minutes with us.

Guess where I will be at 8pm. ;) I can now fix my really bad quiz! :)

But before I go star-gazing, I will go play in our first Ultimate Frisbee game which starts at 6pm today.

This weekend will be really busy, I need to do the following:

• Write up our Legos project report (worth a majority of the grade, due Tuesday)
• Study long and hard for my English Comp II Midterm (on Tuesday)
• Write a 5 page Rogerian paper (due Thursday)
• Sleep
• Do Regular homework

This next week will be pretty busy, in addition to the above, I need to do the following:

• Study a bit for my Discrete Math Quiz on Wednesday.
• Write another Java program (due Wednesday)
• Study long and hard for my Physics Test (taken on Thursday)

Spring break will be nice.

I think I'll wash some clothes now since I didn't do it last weekend.

After Ultimate Frisbee and Stargazing, I will try to do my Discrete Math and catch up on my Calculus homework.

If I somehow get those done at a decent hour, I may try doing some of this Computer Science assignment:

I've posted the "easy" classes -- Quadrilateral, Parallelogram, Rectangle, Square, and Rhombus in the Discussion board on Blackboard. I've also attached the first three to this email. Remember that the three sections of the classroom (north, central, and south) were assigned to work on Trapezoid, Kite, and ArrowHead classes, respectively. Download what I've done and see what you can come up with to add your classes. See you on Friday Dr. Armstrong

Life is busy. Even so, it is well with my soul.

Oh how I wish you could down load your brain into mine!

- by carasmo on the CMSMS forums

From Portugal will legalize abortion:

Mr Socrates had called for voters to back the changes to put an end to the "national shame" of back-street abortions.

So apparently, the way to fix something that is wrong is to say that it is right and start approving of it. In this way, you can fix things and make things "right" by simply changing the standard of "right".

If you do not have a solid unchanging something to base your standard of "right" and "wrong" on, you may as well not claim that anything is right and wrong. Everything becomes merely personal preference. I think that leaving things to personal preference is not the wisest way to go. What if a murderer claims that having the person he murdered around was a "inconvenience"? What will be your reasoning for telling him it was wrong? That you "prefer" he did not murder because it causes you "emotional distress"?

Leaving things up to personal preference means that whoever has the most power will set the standard for right and wrong? Would you like to endure the personal preferences of Hitler? I think not.

Right and Wrong need to be based on an unchanging standard. A standard that does not depend of the whims of human emotion. The best standard that I have found is the Bible.

So about 2 weeks ago, I decided to stop eating dessert. And eh, it's not hard. Less choices I need to make. Sounds good to me. :)

So, if you think it would be hard to stop eating dessert, it's not as hard as you think.

Anyways, lots of stuff today. This can be my "blog-o-the-day" to let you know I'm still alive. ;)

Later,

Elijah

If you have access to the February 3, 2007 edition of World Magazine, make sure you read Letter from prison on page 47.

Anna sent me the link to this. It's pretty funny: Men Are Just Happier People

Breaks are good. I'm back to my old ways, doing lots of stuff on the computer again. :)

I've just upgraded our family PC to [K]Ubuntu Edgy Eft which means they now have Firefox 2 which has built-in spell check. :)

I'm getting involved in CMS Made Simple stuff again which is always fun. Some things I plan to do are make the Comments module use the Captcha module. In addition I need to make inserting a picture or link to a file work in FCKeditor.

We're going to the Nativity movie tonight which should be fun. In addition, on Saturday night we go to a party at the Hart's house.

A copy and paste of the questions I've put into my test prep program and will be going over quite a bit over the next 2 days as I prepare for my Bible exam

# (44) Universe Next Door
    * (733) 11 Fundamental Questions of Life and Death
    * (734) Define: Ontology
    * (735) Epistomology
    * (736) What is a Worldview?
    * (737) What are the seven basic questions that define a worldview?
    * (738) How does Christian Theism answer the 1st worldview question: "What is prime reality?"
    * (739) How does Christian Theism answer the 2nd worldview question: What is the nature of external reality?
    * (740) How does Christian Theism answer the 3rd worldview question: What is a human being?
    * (741) How does Christian Theism answer the 4th worldview question: "What happens when one dies?"
    * (742) How does Christian Theism answer the 5th worldview question: "Is is possible to know anything at all?"
    * (743) How does Christian Theism answer the 6th worldview question: "Is is possible to know right from wrong?"
    * (744) How does Christian Theism answer the 7th worldview question: "What is the meaning of human history?"
    * (745) To close the essay, "What is the central theme of Christian Theism and how does it compare with other worldviews?
    * (746) What are some of the important aspects if Basic Deism?
    * (747) What are some of the important aspects if Basic Naturalism?
    * (748) What are two forms of Naturalism
    * (749) What are some of the important aspects of Nihilism?
    * (750) What are some of the important aspects of Basic Atheistic Existentialism?
    * (751) What are some of the important aspects of Basic Theistic Existentialism?
    * (752) What are some of the important aspects of Eastern Pantheistic Monism?
    * (753) What is the difference between Hindu vs Zen Buddhist Pantheistic Monism?
    * (754) What are some of the important aspects of The New Age?
    * (755) What are some of the important aspects of Postmodernism?
    * (756) 2 Corinthians 10:5
    * (757) Philippians 2:5
    * (758) Explain and give reasons why suffering and evil exist in our world.
    * (759) Define: Ex-nihilo
    * (760) What are the three tenses of Salvation?
    * (761) What are the five pillars of Islam?

Fun stuff. All the "How does Christian Theism answer ..." questions are to prepare for the Essay I will have to write on Christian Theism.

I over study for Bible tests, but at least this is my last one. :)

They've done it again. This time better: Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments II - The Domino Effect.

Aaron Seigo says he is going to open source the CMS that he wrote in September. It sounds a little like CMSMS.

Also he says that he found a nice simple money manager: eqonomize, a tool for personal finances.

See: aseigo: this porridge is juuuuust right:

In other news, "intel is actually pushing out open source graphics drivers for their latest and greatest chipset.".

Good time to be using and involved in Open Source. :)

I wish that I'd found out about KBarcode when I was making Mom's business cards. It sounds like it would have been easier than using OpenOffice.org Read more about it here: Printing labels with KDE (!) | www.kdedevelopers.org:.

Lydia was having problems with her screen having fuzzy/wavy lines in it or what you might call flickering when the CPU was under high load. It would normally only happen when she logged into her PC (Windows loads lots of startup programs then). We confirmed that it was caused by the integrated graphics card because when we tried out the graphics card in the family PC in her computer and the problem went away.

To remedy this problem we have ordered an EVGA GeForce MX 4000 / 128MB DDR / AGP 8X / VGA / TV Out / Video Card for her PC.

I've finished installing Windows XP on my new computer and have installed the following programs on it:

• Mozilla Firefox
• OpenOffice.org
• Spybot Search & Destroy
• Comodo Personal Firewall
• AVG Free Anti-Virus
  

Next, I plan to create a FAT32 partition to share files between Windows XP and Kubuntu. Then after that, time to install Kubuntu! :)

Yesterday, I set up Lydia's PC and today I've just completed putting my PC together. It only took a few hours to put mine together.

I'm writing this from my newly build PC, upstairs in my room. I haven't installed anything to the hard drive yet, I've just booted into the Kubuntu Live CD to make sure everything's working, and it looks like it is. :)

I plan to research whether it'd be better to format the Windows XP partition as FAT32 instead of NTFS so that I'd be able to write to from Linux, then I plan to start installing Windows XP, and then Kubuntu.

After quite a few problems with credit card verification, the order for mine and Lydia's PCs has finally gone through.

Dad was very generous and here's what he bought for us:

For Lydia:

• Acer Aspire T135 AMD Sempron 3100+ 1.8GHz/ 512MB DDR / 160GB SATA HDD / DVD±RW Dual-Layer / Flash Media Reader / Windows XP Home / Desktop PC
• SAMSUNG SCX-4100 14 ppm Laser MFC/All-In-One Monochrome Printer - Retail
• GENERIC USB 2.0 Cable 15FT, Gray Model 10U2-02215 - OEM
• Acer AL1916W Black 19" 8ms Widescreen LCD Monitor - Retail

For myself (It's a barebones kit that I will put together from parts):

• Asus A8N-SLI Socket 939 Barebone Kit / AMD Athlon 64 3200+ OEM / 160GB SATA HDD / 512MB DDR PC3200 / CPU Fan / ATX Mid-Tower Case / X-Finity 500 Watt Power Supply
  • XFX GeForce 6500 TurboCache / 128MB GDDR2 / Supporting 256MB with TurboCache / PCI Express / DVI / VGA / TV Out / Video Card
  • Asus A8N-SLI NVIDIA Socket 939 ATX Motherboard / Audio / PCI Express / Gigabit LAN / USB 2.0 & Firewire / Serial ATA / RAID / SLI
  • AMD Athlon 64 3200+ ClawHammer Socket 939 CPU
  • Masscool / Socket 754, 939, 940 / AMD Athlon 64 / Ball Bearing / CPU Cooling Fan
  • Maxtor / DiamondMax Plus 9 / 160GB / 7200 / 8MB / SATA-150 / OEM / Hard Drive (Refurbished)
  • Ultra / X-Finity / 500-Watt / ATX / 120mm Fan / SATA-Ready / SLI-Ready / Black / Power Supply
  • Ultra 512MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz CL3 Memory
  • Ultra Wizard Black ATX Mid-Tower Case with Front USB and Firewire Ports
• SAMSUNG SCX-4100 14 ppm Laser MFC/All-In-One Monochrome Printer - Retail
• GENERIC USB 2.0 Cable 15FT, Gray Model 10U2-02215 - OEM
• LITE-ON SK-1788/BS 2-Tone PS/2 Wired Standard Keyboard - Retail
• ROSEWILL RM800P Black 3 Buttons 1x Wheel PS/2 Optical Mouse - OEM
• NEC 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE/ATAPI Model ND-3550A - OEM
• Microsoft Windows XP Home With SP2 - OEM
• Acer AL1916W Black 19" 8ms Widescreen LCD Monitor - Retail

(Hmmm... Maybe I'm greedy....)

For the family:

• 2 x SAMSUNG SCX-4521D3 Black Cartridge - Retail - Refills for our current printer.
• Acer AL1916W Black 19" 8ms Widescreen LCD Monitor - Retail

From Why AMD-MHz don't equal Intel-MHz:

Ever make this off-the-cuff comment? "AMD is only clocked at 2.8GHz, while Intel is at 4.0GHz! Intel is much faster." Learn why it's not such a good idea to say that in the company of those who know.

I've known that AMD was a better value, but I've been troubled by the lower clock speeds. Now that I have more understanding about this matter, I can confidentally order AMD based PCs instead of Intel in the computers Dad is buying Lydia and I for college.

I've just installed View Your Mind 1.8.0. The new icons look very spiffy. Much nicer than the old ones!

There is now a version of Picasa for Linux. I had never used Picasa before, but I've found it to be a very slick image manager. Check it out. You might like it.

Also, I'm testing out making a video slideshow from pictures with sound using digiKam, hopefully it works. :)

I've been having problems with Firefox memory leaks causing pages to sometimes not load. It turns out that a bug involving memory leaks with Gmail has been fixed so I've upgraded to the latest trunk build of Firefox (3.0 Alpha 1). It's code named Minefield. It also has some nice new features like spell check in textareas. I like it so far.

I'm also using the dev build of Tab Mix Plus.

Wish me well, Elijah

Cool, there's a GNOME hacker named Elijah Newren. I just read Behind the Scenes: Elijah Newren. It's an interesting interview.