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Scientology Redux

Published
by
Cody
on February 12, 2008
in Rant
. 0 Comments

Sunday was the date of mass protests against the Church of Scientology, which gave passersby the chance to see a bunch of teens in Guy Fawkes masks waving signs about how eeeeevil Scientology is. I bring this up because it seems the novelty of a handful of anonymous hackers and a bunch of their groupies attacking a major organization has worn off. Time for a new spin on things.

The Anonymous versus Church of Scientology war, dubbed Project Chanology, has, once again, turned the world into an annoying place of black and white. I harbor no love for Scientology. However, I do not rabidly hate them. I simply ignore them. I’ve never had to deal with any Scientologists and I’ve never been pushed to become one. If it weren’t for the glorious Internet, I’d know next to nothing about them, and I’d be perfectly happy.

However, this isn’t good enough. If you don’t despise everything Scientology stands for, you may very well be an actual, Dianetics-reading Scientologist for all some people care. I’ve been rebuffed a few times various places on the Internet for daring to speak moderately about the Church. Nasty comments on YouTube, edit wars on Wikipedia…it’s quite ironic, actually. Anonymous, or at least people who say they’re members, claims to be in favor of free speech. It’s one of the main reasons they’re waging war against the Church of Scientology. However, if you use that free speech for anything that isn’t outright condemnation of Scientology, you’re not going to make any friends. You’re either with us or against us, eh? Sounds eerily familiar.

Also, if you’re up for a laugh, you may want to take a look at some of the questions on the Church’s special personality test, including number 92: are you a slow eater? Anyone who can figure out how that’s relevant to anything, especially Scientology, gets a cyber-cookie.

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How to easily upgrade WordPress

Published
by
Cody
on February 7, 2008
in Blog and Guides
. 3 Comments

If you’re like me and run your own copy of WordPress that’s not actually hosted by WordPress.com, upgrading can be a little bit annoying, especially with the minor security fixes that come out every so often. Luckily, there’s a fairly easy way to do this, as Zack of All Trades illustrates. You can do this if you have access to an SSH or Telnet shell. Some hosts don’t offer it, but others do, so you’ll need to check with your web host to see if you can access your account via a shell client. It’s is not for the weak of heart.

I wouldn’t recommend this method for major upgrades, but I suppose it’d work out just fine. I’ve used it for the past few minor updates and it’s been great. Less time spent using an FTP client and more time spent…uh…writing, I suppose. Maybe. Sometimes.

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Python is awesome

Published
by
Cody
on February 4, 2008
in Random
. 5 Comments

I’ve programmed in a couple languages, but I’ve never gotten the hang of any of them. I’ve experimented with PHP, Java, a little bit of C+…they’re all so damn confusing. Sure, I learned how to use Java some (I took an actual class on it), but the syntax was just weird. I’m sure it made sense to someone at Sun Microsystems, but to the rest of us, it’s just messed up.

I came across an xkcd comic involving Python, so I decided to take a look. I’ve only done a couple of tutorials, but from what I’ve seen, Python is insanely simple. Yes, it has its own syntax, but it’s not nearly confusing as Java. For instance, take a look at the ways you print “Hello world” in both languages:

Java:

System.out.println('Hello world');

Python:

print 'Hello world'

What’s even more, that Java snippet is useless without a class surrounding it. The Python code can run just like that (assuming you have a Python interpreter and have made the file executable). No curly brackets, no semicolons, no compiling. I’m definitely going to look more into this programming language. At least until I finally find the drawback. There has to be a drawback to a language this simple. I shall find it and then make witty comments about it to embarrass Python programmers! Excellent.

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Don’t shoot me

Published
by
Cody
on February 2, 2008
in Personal and Political
. 0 Comments

Well, I did it. I voted in Washington’s primary. Actually, the primary isn’t until February 19, but using the miracle of absentee voting, I already filled out my ballot. All that’s left is to mail it and ignore the results. Okay, I won’t ignore them. I’ve decided I can’t completely avoid politics, though I still think it’s a waste of time. We should switch over to a parliamentary, proportional representation system and make things more efficient. And fair.

I suppose the burning question is who did I vote for. It may surprise some of you, but I actually voted for John McCain. This is all about the nomination, after all. On the Democrat side, it’s going to be either Obama or Clinton, and I don’t particularly care for either of them. On the Republican side, however, it’s still pretty wide open. I’m thinking it’ll be either Romney or McCain winning the nomination, as Huckabee is falling far behind and Ron Paul is…well, the very definition of “fringe candidate”. So, since I had to choose a party (either Democrat or Republican), I decided to throw my vote behind McCain, since I’d much rather have him as a nominee than Mitt Romney.

Luckily, though I had to basically become a temporary member of the Republican Party for the nomination process, I’m free to vote for whoever I like come November. Washington State doesn’t have party registration, which is nice. The drawback is that we have to pick a single party for the primary and caucus and stick with it. I don’t know if other states do it differently, but I know it’s a rather unpopular policy here. Heck, I might have the whole deal wrong. I honestly don’t know how things work. I just followed the instructions on my ballot.

So, who will I vote for in the election? I don’t know. It all depends on who the nominees are. I highly doubt I’ll vote Democrat, though, unless Mitt Romney gains the Republican nomination. Otherwise, I’ll probably vote for a third party. Or write myself in. I’m kidding about that last part. I don’t want to be president. That is, not until I’ve completed my plans for world domination!

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Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States