After searching for more music like Porcupine Tree, I found another one of Steven Wilson’s project bands, Blackfield. Blackfield is a joint effort between british Steven Wilson and israeli Aviv Geffen. Blackfield II is their second album and overall is a very pleasant listen, with calming melodies and solem lyrics. From what I can tell, both Aviv and Steven take turns with the singing and the difference in accent is quite apparent. Listeners not used to a foreign English accent might find Aviv’s to be a little odd and take a little getting used to. Of the 10 songs on this album, the ones that stand out are “End of the World”, “1,000 People”, “Miss U” and “Epidemic”, each of which have sad, yet powerful lyrics, and a beautiful musical score to accompany them.

While very partial to Steven Wilson and Porcupine Tree, I think that Blackfield expresses their emotions and thoughts in a very gestalt manner and comes highly recommended.

Blackfield Home

I know it was short, but please give feedback, as I’d like to review more music and critiques would be quite helpful. Ranok

Oh well, I guess I’ll survive.

Peace and chow,

Ranok

Accomplishments:

1. Released the Open Server Platform version 0.2
2. Managed COSI’s Zimbra server
3. Took the following classes: Compilers, Operating Systems, Network Security, Intro. to Psych, E. Linear Algebra.

Goals:

1. Polish off Wiki Wide Web
2. Work on OSP
3. Have a relaxing, fun summer
4. Work on MOSS

That’s all that comes to mind at the moment, I’m sure I’ll think of more as time goes by.

Peace and chow,

Ranok

For the next 3ish weeks of school, here’s what is on my plate:

• 3 exams this week: Linear Algebra, Psych and Compilers
• Formal Methods homework (temporal logic)
• Finish semantic analysis and add code generation to my compiler (shudder)
• Do a Java HashMap speed comparision
• Take a small Psych quiz
• Write up my research on AppArmor and 0-day exploits and present to the class
• Complete my paper for WikiSym 2008
• Add some substantial code to MOSS so it can be demoed
• Study for my exams: Operating Systems, Linear Algebra, Psychology

Once all that is done, I can head home (or not) and relax and work on Wiki Wide Web and other projects until I head off to Canada for the summer, returning for Lauren’s birthday then working here in Potsdam for the remainder of the summer.

Wish me luck,

Ranok

The most important bug fix was a performance issue that caused a slowdown over time, this has been fixed and along with it, the performance and scalability has increased! The biggest feature added was support for UDP (and soon SCTP, and SSL) which can be set without changing the code! Imagine writing a server and deploying it using TCP, UDP, SSL and SCTP, just by changing one line in the XML servlet.

Setup should be simple too, just download from Google Code, extract, make and then compile your servlet. Now on the first node, run ./start-osp.sh and then you can telnet to port 9876 and administer your cluster.

Links:

• Open Server Platform home
• OSP Group
• OSP Code

Enjoy,

Ranok

For more information, check out the home page, the Google Code page and the Google Group.

After watching “Fitna“, a short movie/slide-show about Islam being an inherently violent religion bent on the assimilation and control of the world, I thought it was time to give my 2 cents. In quite a bit of America, Islam is blamed for the 9/11 attacks and everything else that’s wrong in the world. This fear of Islam is being used to remove our rights and freedoms, and I think that it is sad that our country has come to this. After watching “Fitna”, I think that it incites hatred and anger by selectively picking verses from the Qur’an and showing clips of extremists calling for blood. If you read the Qur’an, you’ll find wonderful verses such as Surah 2: 109,110 and Surah 2: 195 (I know there are more, but this is what I could find just reading part of Surah 2). If you look to the Holy Bible, you’ll find equally incendiary verses: Exodus 1:16, Numbers 31:17, etc…

I don’t think that the problem is the religion, but the extremists of any type. Those who hate those that differ from them, and would kill those who do not see their way. I think that there are extremists of most all religions, not just Islam. Watch “Camp Jesus“, which is a documentary of an evangelical bible camp that indoctrinates young children to “fight for Jesus” and that siding with the conservative right is politically the only religiously ‘right’ thing to do. I think that this is a terrifying form of extremism right in our backyard. One only has to look to the KKK to see another Christian extremism sect that is bent on the destruction of everyone who they don’t like.

Does the existance of the Taliban mean that Islam is inherently evil and violent, if so, then doesn’t that mean that Christianity is equally evil because the KKK identify themselves as Christian? Should we hate all Mormans because the fundamentalists are polygamists who ‘marry’ girls as young as 14 and have as many 65 ‘wives’? I’m asking you to answer these questions yourself, and perhaps see that one religion isn’t evil and another is good. To modify a popular saying, “Religion doesn’t kill people, people kill people”. I think this is a true statement and should be taken to heart. I sincerely believe that a religion that teaches only hate and violence will never have a mainstream following, and that there are people who are scared or ignorant and rather than face these fears, they try to destroy all opposition to what they think. These people don’t come from a single religion, but all beliefs and religions.

Only by educating our kin and teaching ethics and morals can we hope to eradicate extremist violence. I am not calling for people to abandon their beliefs, but to be open and respectful to others. Humans have enough differences (skin tone, height, language, etc…) to fight about, they don’t need to fight about things that can’t be seen (religion and beliefs).

Hopefully people will read and think about this,

Ranok

EasyRSS can be downloaded here

Peace and chow,

Ranok

Progress:

• Rewrote much of OSP to take in a XML servlet (meta-data and code) and act as a socket broker for that servlet.
• Wrote a  number of  servlet libraries to make programming easier and safer.
• Added a global shared state that can be spread redundantly across multiple nodes (using Mnesia)
• Added the ability for applications to be atomic, either they complete and update the shared state, or they crash and don’t influence the shared state at all.

Todo:

• Move the OSP broker under an OTP supervisor for auto-restart.
• Make OSP more configurable and automatic
• Make a nice administration and status system
• Devise and implement a load balancing and fail-over system
• Test and tweak as needed
• Write more servlet libraries

Also, I have been approached by a CS senior from the west coast who has offered to help work on ERLFS! I’d love more help if you know/want to learn Erlang, and help develop a very powerful and useful product.

Peace and chow,

Ranok