on the left, a stripped candle

So I scraped the wax off one of the candles and found some gray flakes (fairy dust!) surrounding the wick. The material could be seen through the thin layer of wax along the entire length of the candle. The sparkling effect suggests that the flakes are metallic. They should also have a low heat capacity and autoignition point, so that even after the flame appears to be extinguished, they are warm enough to continue burning and light the candle again. What are these metallic flakes? I burned a candle to find out.

burning the candle

The white sparks of light were reminiscent of burning magnesium. Magnesium burns at or above 473 °C (883 °F), which is more than sufficient to ignite the paraffin vapor streaming away from a recently-extinguished candle wick.

magnesium turnings on fire

Other metals could be added for a variety of spark colors.

Gone

The requested resource
/
is no longer available on this server and there is no forwarding address. Please remove all references to this resource.

His other websites, as well as social networking accounts, have also gone:

• Dive Into Python
• Dive Into Python 3
• Dive Into HTML5
• GitHub (though it seems that someone has re-created the account)
• Twitter
• Google+
• Reddit

His personal site is missing, too.

Whoa. How does someone just evaporate off the Internet like that? The search continues, but there may be a ray of hope…

Pilgrim has shared an incredible volume of information with Internet users everywhere. I hope he is alright.

Update:

ultimatebuster pointed me to firehose.diveintomark.org [ATOM], which contained recent Twitter activity; the site is now inaccessible, so the link points to my personal mirror copy.

Jason Scott called Pilgrim’s local police department, and Pilgrim was less than amused…

I called his police department to ask for a welfare check – someone had done it 4 minutes before me.

Mark Pilgrim is alive/annoyed we called the police. Please stand down and give the man privacy and space, and thanks everyone for caring.

The communication was specifically verified, it was him, and that’s that. That was the single hardest decision I’ve had to make this year.

… and that’s that!

As before, the VM is named mustard, my username is inportb, and this file is called /etc/init/mustard.conf…

description “mustard VM”
author “Jiang”

start on (local-filesystems and net-device-up IFACE=eth0)
stop on runlevel [016]

console output

respawn
respawn limit 5 10

pre-stop script
su inportb -c “VBoxManage controlvm mustard savestate”
end script

exec su inportb -c “VBoxHeadless –startvm mustard”

As soon as the local filesystems are ready and the network is up, Upstart would run VBoxHeadless and monitor the process. Should the process die unexpectedly (such as if someone hits the guest’s shutdown button by mistake), Upstart would bring it right back up. Furthermore, if some problem keeps terminating the process soon after starting, Upstart would stop trying after 5 bounces in 10 seconds. The “correct” way to start and stop the guest, respectively, would be through the host…

sudo start mustard
sudo stop mustard

Before we start, here’re the guest specifications that we’re looking for…

• VM name mustard
• RAM 1 GiB
• SATA controller with 20 GiB disk at mustard.vdi
• IDE controller with CD/DVD at installer.iso
• Bridged networking using host adapter eth0
• OS Windows 7

Create machine and disk…

VBoxManage createvm --name mustard --ostype Windows7 --register
VBoxManage modifyvm mustard --memory 1024 --acpi on --boot1 dvd --nic1 bridged --bridgeadapter1 eth0
VBoxManage createhd --filename mustard.vdi --size 20480

Create SATA controller and attach disk…

VBoxManage storagectl mustard --name “SATA Controller” --add sata --controller IntelAhci
VBoxManage storageattach mustard --storagectl “SATA Controller” --port 0 --device 0 --type hdd --medium mustard.vdi

Create IDE controller and add disc…

VBoxManage storagectl mustard --name “IDE Controller” --add ide --controller PIIX4
VBoxManage storageattach mustard --storagectl “IDE Controller” --port 0 --device 0 --type dvddrive --medium installer.iso

The proprietary version of VirtualBox exports a nifty RDP service that you can use to set up the machine. With VirtualBox 4+, the proprietary extensions come in a separate package. Note that the local and remote mouse cursors are not synchronized, so it may be somewhat difficult to operate. Starting the machine is simple…

VBoxHeadless --startvm mustard

After installation, I’d recommend setting up RDP from within Windows (or SSH in a UNIXy guest), because of the subpar VirtualBox RDP experience. If you want, change the boot order and remove the installer CD/DVD…

VBoxManage modifyvm mustard --boot1 disk
VBoxManage storageattach mustard --storagectl “IDE Controller” --port 0 --device 0 --medium emptydrive

… and that’s that! Since I’m using an Ubuntu host, my next post deals with how to start and suspend this VM during boot and shutdown.

During the downtime, EveryDNS/DynDNS kept the DNS service going and Freenode chugged along as usual. The wiki was completely wiped, but I managed to scrape most of the text from caches everywhere; it will be returning shortly, and I’ll probably need some help moving the cached content to their rightful place.

Until next time

If you don’t have an iDevice yet, I’d urge you to consider getting an Android device instead. Apple makes perfectly capable (and absolutely beautiful) PDA’s and tablets, but insists that they be tethered to the desktop iTunes software. Thus, even if you are able to use iTunes, you cannot achieve total independence with hardware marketed as mobile devices. There are short-term workarounds, but Apple is always looking for ways to limit the functionality of their products. You have been warned.

Out of the box, an iMobileDevice really wants to be activated using iTunes. I used ideviceactivate, but in most cases, it should not be too difficult to borrow a Windows or Mac PC (or boot up a virtual machine) and just use iTunes. While you have access to this machine, you might as well jailbreak your iMobileDevice. I’ve heard that you could also hop down to the nearest Apple store for activation, but obviously you cannot get your device jailbroken this way.

The file management options on iMobileDevices are rather sparse, but so far I’ve found OpenSSH (free via Cydia) useful for both commandline access and file management over the network. The default root password of “alpine” should only be used long enough for you to change it to something else. iFile is a nice graphical file manager (that can also manage the root filesystem after you move it to /Applications over SSH), and there are various local terminal apps available via Cydia.

Music is a particularly sticky issue, considering that iMobileDevices are often also marketed as media players. The onboard iPod app refuses to play audio that is placed on the device by means other than iTunes (such as over SSH or downloaded using the browser). SMusic and dTunes (free via Cydia) are able to play all system-supported files on the filesystem without the help of iTunes. I wanted a bit more functionality, so I sought a way to hack the iTunesDB where the stock media player app stores its metadata. PwnTunes ($12.99 via Cydia) does this and provides some convenient features:

• extends the MTP interface (enabling Windows users to add music over USB without additional software)
• plugs into the stock media player (adding new files found in a particular directory to the library)

I have not needed to make backups yet, but this is another feature provided by iTunes that may be replaced by third-party software. iBye ($1.99 via Cydia) claims to be able to backup/restore against a FTP server, Dropbox, or a local directory. I have not tried this yet, but I’m sure I will need something like this in the future.

What are some other (and perhaps less costly) ways of making iMobileDevices useful? I’d love to know.

Also, some parts of the site have been remapped or removed. The wiki is now at wiki.inportb.com and the forum is gone. If you want the forum back, please leave a comment below to that effect. If there’s anything else you’d like to see, please also indicate that in your comment.

Happy new year!

Since God is such a complex idea, let’s start with the simpler ones. But even the simplest ideas are linked to other ideas; that is, no idea can be considered in isolation. If I asked you to think about an egg, you might also think of breakfast, or the chicken that laid that egg, or the chicken that might have been if you hadn’t eaten it (but which came first?). Each idea supersedes another or is superseded by another; each idea contains others or is contained by others. It is through ideas that we experience and understand the world, and history is the process by which new ideas are created and old ones refined. If we were to trace the evolution of any idea, we would be watching the process of history unfolding.

For example, Aristotle hypothesized that an object fell to the ground at a speed that depended on its mass and air resistance. Galileo tested the hypothesis and found that mass had nothing to do with speed, and that air resistance was all that mattered. On this foundation, Newton formulated his laws of motion and introduced the world to the invisible attractive phenomenon of gravitation.

This progression of ideas can be explained by the Hegelian dialectic, whereby Aristotle’s thesis was reversed by Galileo’s antithesis, and both were incorporated into Newton’s synthesis. We have come to learn a lot more about physics since Newton, and classical Newtonian gravitation became a thesis reversed by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. As the chain of reversals continues, we appropach absolute truth, the perfect idea that encompasses all of history and has no antithesis.

Does the categorical imperative exist, then? We might think that because there exists a perfect idea, there must be an ultimate commandment of reason that directs our morals, duties, and obligations; however, we must not fall into this trap. Since perfection is the endpoint of history, it does not yet exist. Any truth that we accept today is imperfect and subject to refinement. We are, at this moment, in the process of discovering and creating the perfect idea.

We shape history purely by virtue of existence, and everyone gets something unique out of the experience. During this holiday season, let’s celebrate another year of progress towards God.

Signatures were once used to express something personal about the sender or convey a useful notice. Today, abuse seems to be the norm. It’s just an observation. If you actually like these messages, just go right on sending them…