Nick Mudge Ignition Software Consulting & Development

λ    One of the things I've thought about and has been suggested to me by friends is that there should be a name for the monetary unit used on newsconomy.com other than "Units".

Tonight at the grocery store it came to me. Lambda!

Lambda is the 11th letter in the greek alphabet and has the value 30 in the greek numeral system. The symbol λ is the lambda letter.

Part of how I got this idea is through the study functional programming languages, of which lambda calculus plays a rather significant role.

Thanks to Aaron Parecki for suggesting today that I make a better name.

Paul Wells pointed out to me that the lambda character is also used as a logo for Half-Life, the first-person shooter game.

I used to collect baseball cards. Mostly I would just buy packs of cards. It was fun to see if I got some good ones.

I put together a little news and information website called newsconomy.com. It is a site for submitting, buying and selling news and things on the Web. Really, you're submitting, selling and buying webpages and websites. Even more accurately you're submitting, buying and selling URLs. It is how you might discover it. It is also, of course, for casual browsing.

I have some Barry Bonds baseball cards. But I don't own Barry Bonds. I own references to Barry Bonds via thin pieces of cardboard with pictures of him. Baseball cards have value because some people agree they do, particularly people that like baseball.

Newsconomy, you might say, is a website for generating baseball cards for the Web.

Well, I just got to say, I already own Google.

But besides the game and culture that I think is part of the site, I think it is a way to generate and discover more great material on the Web. The apex of the Web is finding great stuff.

Awhile ago I started writing an essay called The Value of a Website.

Useful tutorials and resources to use and learn DNS:

How Domain Name Servers Work
easyDNS Tutorial
How To Set Up Linux DNS Services
More on Google

Free DNS service: EveryDNS.net

Recently, I had trouble getting my microphone to work in Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn. I need it for Skype. Tried lots of things and searched Google a lot for answers.

Finally, I think what really fixed it was following the instructions on this page to update to the most recent version of alsa.

My microphone works now. Here are my settings after updating to the latest alsa:

To see the desktop sound settings, click on the sound icon at the top right of your desktop. I have three tabs, they say, "Play Back", "Recording", and "Options". In Play Back and Recording the sound is turned all the way up. In options I have "Front Mic" selected as the Input Source. This is so that I can plug in my microphone into the microphone slot/jack in the front of my computer.

Open up a console. Type in alsamixer and press enter. I turned up the volume in every setting I could in that application by pressing the up key for each setting. Make sure that none of the settings are muted. I think the microphone option is muted by default. To unmute, go to one of the settings and press the m key. On my machine when I do that, I get "00" at the bottom of the setting. The "00" means that the option/setting is unmuted. To move around in the settings use the arrow keys. To move to more options, press the tab key. Go to the setting called "ADCMux". Then press the space bar. This make the word "CAPTUR" appear. Now you're done. Press escape to get out. Go to options in Skype and choose the Sound Devices option. Test the microphone and sound there.

I've been putting off blogging because I've been busy! But I can't help myself this morning, and it is 4:17AM, prime blogging time.

I've been trying to sleep and one of the things I was combating was the incessant chirping. With each chirp, each one about 5 minutes apart, I got curiouser and curiouser.

Finally I had enough. I got up and checked the kitchen. No, didn't look like it was from there. I went to the hall and looked at the smoke detector. Chirp! That was it. Maybe that means the battery is getting low? This is my first time having my own apartment, so I'm not sure about all this business. I took the battery out, and Chirp! What does that mean? It chirps without the battery?

I really can't stand bugs, and not knowing things. Well I do what I always do in such a situation, ask google. I searched for smoke detector chirping. Chirping really is the right word.

And the first thing I run into is this hilarious chirping story, that incidentally answers my questions. In this story the chirping got so bad and mysterious the guy started to wonder things like maybe there is a hidden robotic cricket programmed to add confusion to his life.

Luckily, after the final chirp that occurred right after I took the battery out, the chirping ceased.

Good video on the use of wikis and blogs internally in business.