Bob's Test Bog

[rwadholm]

The Value of HTML

The Value of HTML

HTML, as a markup language, is a human-centered language focused on the simple structuring of data in an informative way. In that sense, it is about the transformation of data into information, and the relating of information to other information (structurally and across sets of information, in the form of links and dynamic content). When its structure is non-informative, it fails to meet it…

View On WordPress

[rwadholm]

Why Learn?

I delivered the following talk in our college chapel entitled “Why Learn?” (This work is creative commons licensed 2.0 share-alike, which means you can do anything you want with it, including print it, distribute it, download it, put it in a book, change it, sell it, and all without telling me what you’ve done.)

Today I would like to present an answer to the question: “Why learn?” We are in a…

View On WordPress

[rwadholm]

Someone Else's Skepticism

Someone Else’s Skepticism

Are all my questions merely parodies? Is my thought life, in my skepticism, a shadow in the community of skeptics, in the brilliant light of my forebears, and to them my light of doubt is a mere moon, reflecting their journey, and my homeland? Did I merely accept doubt, or did it come to me honestly; was I drowning, or did I only imagine I was because someone told me they were? Am I merely…

View On WordPress

[rwadholm]

A Critique of Bertrand Russell's Why I am Not a Christian

A Critique of Bertrand Russell’s Why I am Not a Christian

Bertrand Russell, in a lecture titled “Why I am not a Christian,” states the following:

“We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world—its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is, and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence, and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole…

View On WordPress

[rwadholm]

What is Teaching? What is Learning?

What is Teaching? What is Learning?

What is teaching, and what is learning? Is teaching the conveyance of information, the banking of knowledge (both knowing how and knowing that) into additional human minds and lives? Is it mere replication of stored knowledge and skills, authoritatively passed on to the next generation? Are we uploaders?

Is learning all about downloading the correct information, the replication of outside…

View On WordPress

[rwadholm]

On Time Travel

Deterministic fatalism is the view that all events are determined or predetermined by prior events, usually with the result that free will is an illusion. Anything that happens would always have happened that way, and no (material) events can occur that were not already determined after the state of the world has some sense of established cause and effect in order.

Whatever will be, will be.

I…

View On WordPress

[rwadholm]

Identity & Identicality

Identity and identicality are two different things. I may have an identical twin who shares all of my physical characteristics, and yet who is not me. We are different persons. I have one identity, and he has another. However, is my twin identical to me in every way? Do we share every attribute? For instance, are we in the same place at the same time and share all characteristics in common? If…

View On WordPress

[rwadholm]

On the Timelessness of an In-Time God

The following is a response to Roger E. Olson’s short online article An Example of Unwarranted Theological Speculation: Divine Timelessness (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2015/02/an-example-of-unwarranted-theological-speculation-divine-timelessness/). Olson’s main thesis is that the idea of God’s timelessness is a flawed alien concept borrowed from Greek philosophy that has no basis in…

View On WordPress

[rwadholm]

Human Developers

When working in a silo, developers often begin to think of themselves and to act as if they were non-humans, foregoing sleep, food, and the niceties of human life (like rising from a chair…or blinking). The closer to the metal, the further from the flesh. Peer review by other developers helps those developers to see themselves as users—humans. Not just a computing brain with inputs and outputs…

View On WordPress

[rwadholm]

Scraping Stuff

http://www.hack.invariable.org/scrape.txt

http://www.hack.invariable.org/scrape.html

Here is some site scraping for your php/html enjoyment. The first link is a .txt version that you can just rename .php. The second is the page that shows the content (right click to view source).

This last week in the Hacker’s Club we worked on scraping some content from another web page in php using curl:

http:/…

View On WordPress

[rwadholm]

SQLing It Up

SQL databases are a standard for many Web applications and content management systems. This week the server hackers took a stab at connecting to and reading a MySQL database using PHP:

http://www.hack.invariable.org/index.txt

Check out the code we worked on and let us know if you have questions. Next week we may try some updating, reading and deleting on the database.

 View On WordPress

[rwadholm]

Making Pi

rwadholm:

Raspberry Pi session notes.

Originally posted on Mizzou Server Hackerspace:

Raspberry Pi: inedible, but oh so sweet

These last two sessions (with a Spring Break in the middle), our group has looked at setting up a Raspberry Pi as a server and we are still working on connection issues with Cloud9 IDE.

For the Raspberry Piserver, we had a fun string of events. First, we had to find…

View On WordPress

[rwadholm]

The Rise of the Machines

The Rise of the Machines

rwadholm:

We have started a Mizzou Server Hackerspace at the Digital Media Zone that I manage, with a blog to match.

Originally posted on Mizzou Server Hackerspace:

The age of the machines has come, and we as mere humans want to understand our overlords better. This week, in celebration of the World Wide Web’s 25th anniversary, we have inaugurated an informal weekly get-together at University…

View On WordPress

[rwadholm]

The Puzzle of Transparency

In Experience and Experiment in Art, Alva Noё (2000) argues that experience is more complex than it seems. Reflection on art can aid in our understanding of perceptual consciousness, and be a “tool of phenomenological investigation” (p. 123). Reflection…

View Post

[rwadholm]

Kant's Subjective Universal Validity

In Analytic of the Beautiful (Book 1 in Critique of Judgment), Kant discusses the judgment of taste, and presents arguments concerning the nature of beauty in comparison with that which is pleasant or good. Kant argues that judgments of taste…

View Post

[rwadholm]

New Media Literacy & Video Games

This past week I have been studying up on new media, media literacy, and new media literacy. It is interesting to me how much of this literature surrounds use of video games in education. New media is defined in different ways by researchers in different…

View Post

[rwadholm]

Violent Video Games Study Design

Thinking about the several research studies that have been done in the last decade on the impact of violent video games on levels of aggression and violence in players, I think a major stumbling block has been in the area of research design–the validity…

View Post