Skip to main content

Random News and Great News from Richmond

Linux Magic: Turn dead Win98 PCs into Internet stations.

The Marine Corps just suddenly discovered email. It's funny to see the barrage of email coming from my reserve unit now that I won't be there for a year. =)

I spent the wholllllllllle day at a "Get Motivated" seminar at the Colisseum in Richmond. It didn't motivate me, but YWAM Richmond raised $2400 for their training school by sending us volunteers to help with the event. Interesting mix of people ... the company that organized the event is Christ-based and a few of their speakers hint at Christian principles but all in all it seemed like a cliche accomplish dreams, set goals, make-your-money-work-for-you-not-you-work-for-your-money seminar. Some parts could have come straight out of a Simpson's episode. On the positive side we got to hear some speeches from Steve Forbes, Rudolf Giuliani, and some random billionaires that want to help us become millionaires by spending money on their stock analysis toolkits.

But the really cool news is ... I only have one document left to go before I can send in my visa application to the Brazilian embassy. Yippee!! And I mean that yippee from the the bottom of my sleep deprived heart.

The other great news is that Agapao Center is going to receive tax-deductible donations on my behalf. And I quote Jon Norsworthy President of Agapao Center, "...the person must pay by check made out to “Agapao Center, Inc.” with “Darian Hickman Brazil Missions” on the subject line or pay via Pay Pal at the www.agapaosanctuary.org website with a separate email stating the amount paid on PayPal for your missions trip. Either way I will need their name and addresses if they want tax deduction." I am heeding the sagely wisdom of my friend Kay here at YWAM Richmond who says "Americans are the most generous people in the world if you make it easy for them." It doesn't get any easier than Paypal ... except for maybe giving me cash the next time you see me. Hmmm.... maybe that seminar did get to me, I don't mind asking people for money so much now.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Netsquared likes Village and I'm in LA now.

On March 13th, Village the Game received a great response from the NetSquared NetTuesday meeting in San Francisco. It's really encouraging to meet so many people who want to help Village succeed. Now I'm off to LA to work with buddies in "the industry" for creating some promo videos for Village the Game. Most recent epiphany I've had: Sharing the vision of Village is a lot more effective in a visual format rather than as a casual conversation at a bar. :) If you're in LA let me know. I'd love to catch up.

Physics Moment: how many zoom levels does the Universe require?

I made a quick table of reference lengths in meters to figure out if I ever made a data visualization tool for the entire universe, how many zoom levels would it have to support? One zoom level is one power of ten.  reference length power is there anything meaningful that's smaller than planck length? planck length 1.62E-35 meters nanometer 1.00E-09 meter 1.00E+00 kilometer 1.00E+03 light year 9.46E+15 meter diameter of known universe 4.40E+26 So the total zoom levels of the Entire Universe are: 61.00 61 zoom levels is way more than Farmville or Warcraft So 61 zoom levels. How do these zoom levels compare to the Big Data Explosion.   reference quantity of data bytes bit 1.25E-01 1 or 0 and that's it. byte 1.00E+00 base unit for most data types in programming languages kb 1.00E+03 Starting number for web optimized images and javascript libraries mb 1.00E+06 Starting number for a song gigabytes GB 1.00E+09 This is base unit of $10 USB sticks terab...