Today, I had the privilege of attending a program where Krish Dhanam was speaking. It was a fine talk. However, he took the help of a few poems here and there to make his point. Two of them I knew, other two were new to me but with the help of “The Googles” I was able find them. Then I thought, since I have collected them, I should also post them.

Once my computer has started, prompts me to log in. The login manager that I use is LightDM (However, in my days using arch linux, I used a script that automagically started X using .xinitrc when I log into tty1. That script went into .bashprofile). There isn’t much to say about a login manager because it’s pretty common. It asks for a username and a password. Then lets me choose a Xsession to log into.

My choice of operating system is GNU/Linux. The reasons are simple. 1. I still use a decade old Pentium 4 computer with a 2.4GHz cpu and 512MB RAM (Yes, I know phones have more RAM these days…) I could just use good old windows xp, but, I don't want to use a decade old operating system when I can use a brand new one for free of cost. Which beats windows in many aspects.

Here’s something that I’m thinking/learning about for past one month. It began as a simple question that many people legitimately ask, and one that I have asked myself many-a-times. The question is this: Why did God allow the devil to do as he wished with Job. Why did Job suffer? I’d like to share my thoughts on the subject. Prelude The book of Job is one of the oldest books in the bible.

For past few weeks I’ve been involved in a debate in one internet discussion forum. The subject is, “Why do people believe in God?”. Since, I am a believer, I thought, let’s join in. Let’s see what happens. So, I presented my reasons in a simple manner. Starting from the cosmological argument, then to the intelligibility of the universe, then history and finally my own experience. However, since I entered the discussion, it has really heated up.

Warning: This is a radioactive braindump. Reading further might hurt your brain. Now that’s aside, I’d like to talk about one of the things that I’m biased about. I’m biased about biases. My bias is, everyone is biased. And, there are right biases, wrong biases and ugly biases. So the first question that comes into my mind is, what the heck does these terms mean? I’m going to assume that everyone knows what is bias.

Today, in the ICPF cell group, there was one question raised that I had already dealt with in my mind. But haven’t documented the answer anywhere. Writing helps me refine my thoughts and give a structure to what is otherwise, like a maze. A maze only I can solve. Because I created it. And nobody can look at it, because it’s inside my mind. However, since I haven’t documented the answer, the answer to this little question was like a maze in my mind, and when this question was raised, I did answer it, however, wasn’t able to answer with the clarity I would have liked to answer with.

But also elusive. I have been thinking of writing to this blog more often, but I also want to write those things in awesome way! And these two intentions of mine, contradict each other. If I write things in awesome way, it takes a lot of time for refinement and finding the right words. So, I tend to post less often. However, the problem is, I have ideas in my head popping up everyday and now I have list of different ideas to write about.

You might have read my previous post about Yahoo! pipes. However, they weren’t working out as I thought they would. Gnus was still taking up a lot of time to start up. So, I thought, there must be some other way to boost the start up time. I looked around and tried to find out what other people were using. After reading this transcript a couple of days ago, and reading curious little mention of Gwene, I decided to check it out this on Saturday.

In a recent ICPF cell group, I was given a chance to give a message. I thought for a while on the subject and thought about what I should speak. After some thoughts, I decided on the topic of “Word of God”. What is it, and why should we study it. Then I thought, now that I have compiled this, it might be useful to someone somewhere if I put it on the internets!

I have often wondered what is the meaning of the following bible verse: John 8:32: and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. (ESV) It seemed a very strange preposition. Know the truth, and the truth will set you free. If truth were a physical object, like a sword, I would have thought, it means, learn using the sword, and it will set you free. However, I thought, truth is just an abstract concept of mind.

For a couple of months now, I am using emacs exclusively for a lot of things. Pretty much everything except web browsing. For it, I use luakit. I use emacs for coding, blogging, note taking, file system management, emails, rss feeds, todo management… pretty much 80% of my computer time is spent inside emacs. However, there was a problem. I use gnus for email and rss feeds. Problem was, I have about 10-15 rss feeds and when I want to check them, I start gnus.

Many-a-times I have asked myself this question. What does it mean to worship. I did a quick lookup in a dictionary and in it, to describe what is worship, words like love, admiration and devotion are used. All of these can are very interesting. If you have read my previous posts, you might know my semantic analysis of the different aspects of the subject matter and describing it’s inner working. However, I feel as if I were to do the same to this topic, I wouldn’t be doing justice to it.