Ted Carnahan

Pivirotto Wedding Pictures Available

Ted Carnahan — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 23:59:00 +0000

I’ve finally gotten around to posting Chris and Marie Pivirotto’s wedding pictures. They were taken with my n800, so they are pretty grainy, but there’s still a couple of good ones there. Enjoy!

“Freedom Software” versus “Free Software”

Ted Carnahan — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:34:57 +0000

“‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy; …O, be some other name! What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet…” - Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Perhaps the most frustrating thing for me as an advocate for the use of Free(dom) software in the church is explaining the term “Free Software.” What does that mean? Most people, hearing that name, think “freeware” - any software that is free to use without serious limitations. But, of course, that’s only half of the meaning behind the term.

When explaining the term “Free Software” people most commonly use the phrase “free as in beer, free as in speech” to talk about the difference between the two meanings of the English word “free.” “Free as in beer” refers to “freeware,” software which is available free of charge but over which you have little extra control. Sometimes you can redistribute freeware, sometimes, not, and the terms are dictated (and, to an extent, can be changed) by the author of the software.

On the other hand, “free as in speech” refers to what I like to call “Freedom Software.” With Freedom Software, one has an inviolable right to use, copy, redistribute, and usually even modify the software if you so choose. Freedom Software licenses like the GNU Public License are more focused towards guaranteeing the freedoms of the recipients of the software than the rights of the author.

The ambiguous meaning of the word “free” in English is the source of the trouble. When I introduce the topic of “Free Software,” I have to spend time talking about the difference between “free as in beer” and “free as in speech.” It’s hard to make a compelling case for change when you’re hung up on semantics. By talking and writing about “Freedom Software,” it’s far easier to make the important point about freedom.

There are two pivotal issues for churches (and nearly everyone else) when it comes to software licensing: cost and freedom. Using the term “Freedom Software” is, in my opinion, the best way to emphasize the benefits of free software to churches.

If you’re interested in more discussion of Freedom Software and the church, subscribe to my RSS feed and check out these articles:

Does your website sell Viagra too?

Ted Carnahan — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 01:14:25 +0000

I decided to upgrade my Wordpress installation on this website tonight. I wanted to take advantage of tags, faster code, and the new administrative backend available in Wordpress 2.6. Everything went fairly smoothly (except that my category names weren’t migrated, but I didn’t care because I was changing to tags) and I was pretty satisfied, but something was still amiss. My search engine rankings had been dropping for several months, but I had shrugged it off.

If your search engine rankings start dropping, something is wrong. Don’t stop looking until you find out what.

I wish I had taken that simple advice months ago. When I went to “View Source” in Firefox, I discovered that someone had hacked my Wordpress installation and changed my template to include thousands of hidden spammy links. Not only did that inflate the page size, but it destroyed my credibility in the eyes of Google, etc.

Here’s hoping that the search engines will once again recognize my brilliance (cough, cough) so that my ranks rise again soon.

We’re having a baby!

Ted Carnahan — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 02:12:14 +0000

Jennifer and I are pleased to announce that we’re expecting our first child in January! Here’s a little picture of the cutey (at 8 weeks, 2 days, so it’s been a few weeks since then.). I don’t know about you, but I think s/he looks just like Jennifer.

Error 404 Money Not Found

Ted Carnahan — Thu, 22 May 2008 18:42:17 +0000

BackupPC only when mobile device / laptop is plugged in

Ted Carnahan — Thu, 22 May 2008 08:56:58 +0000

I’m the proud owner of a Nokia N800 Internet Tablet (which I will, of course, write about later) and I’ve been getting around to doing a bit of hardware hackery now that the semester has ended. I wanted to integrate this tasty little Linux machine into my home backup system, which is powered by BackupPC. Unfortunately, running rsync and wireless eats up the battery pretty quickly. Thus, I rigged up this command, which will cause the backup to fail if the tablet is not plugged in.

$Conf{RsyncClientCmd} = '$sshPath -q -x -l root $host grep -q 0 /sys/power/sleep_while_idle && $rsyncPath $argList+';

The key is grep -q 0 /sys/power/sleep_while_idle which queries the kernel to see whether the CPU should sleep when it’s idle. When the N800 is plugged in, the value is 0, grep -q returns a non-zero exit code, and the backup proceeds. When the N800 is on battery, the value is 1, and the backup stops. The string /sys/power/sleep_while_idle is definitely hardware specific, and you’ll need to poke around /sys or /proc for an appropriate filename and value to grep for.

Israel Pictures Available

Ted Carnahan — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 02:35:25 +0000

Well, our pictures have been available for quite a while, but I’ve been lazy and haven’t posted a link anywhere public. No longer: Here they are, all >6000 of them. Israel was a fantastic experience.

If you’re interested in learning more about peace and justice for Palestinians, please visit these sites:

ICADH - The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions - a group working to end Israeli demolition of Palestinian housing
B’Tselem - an organization documenting human rights abuses against Palestinians by the Israeli Defense Forces
Al Jazeera English - a news network just as biased as CNN or CBS or Fox, but in the “other” direction

Vacation in Chicago

Ted Carnahan — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 18:06:54 +0000

Jennifer and I took a quick three-day vacation to Chicago, and we had a blast! We visited Shedd Aquarium, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Science and Industry, and we ate at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. We also went to see an excellent performance of Blue Man Group at the Briar Street Theater. Check out our pictures from the trip:

Fix missing thumbnails in Nautilus

Ted Carnahan — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 20:15:03 +0000

As I begin assembling the picture package for my J-term trip to Israel and Palestine, I’ve run into a problem: with high-end digital cameras, the JPEG-compressed image files are larger than 5 MB, and Nautilus (the default Ubuntu file manager) won’t create thumbnails for pictures that size.

The solution: a bit of configuration in gconf-editor. Navigate to key /apps/nautilus/preferences and increase the size of thumbnail_limit to something more reasonable for modern cameras.

UVB bulbs and Veiled Chameleons

Ted Carnahan — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 18:38:12 +0000

Thanks to a concerned reader of my last post about veiled chameleon light bulbs, we realized that a UVA-only was not sufficient to take care of Ezekiel. Jenni (the reader, not my wife Jennifer) was concerned that we had bought a basking bulb instead of a proper UV bulb, and she’s quite right: there is some evidence that without proper UVB irradiation, veiled chameleons may develop metabolic bone disease and die. There is at least one study that suggests that veileds don’t really need UVB if they are properly supplemented with vitamin powder on their food; nevertheless, we subscribe to the philosophy of “better safe than sorry.”

Thus, we replaced our ordinary UVA bulb with a UVA/B bulb to help encourage healthy vitamin D3 production. The bulbs are more expensive, but it’s definitely worthwhile. And good bulbs like the Reptisun line of bulbs are now available in compact fluorescent, so you can use your old reflector.

Two items to remember: UV bulbs are no substitute for a infrared bulb of some sort to allow for sunning and temperature self-regulation. Also, UVB bulbs will continue emitting visible light for a long time, but they run out of steam in the UV spectrum within 12 months, so replace your bulb(s) yearly.