Notebook of Sand

Leaves in the Desert - Contents

Contact: jnm@rubberpaw.com

Curriculum Vitae

Studies: Cambridge University

• Recent Publications
• Recent Projects
• Conferences & Speaking
Lecture, Cambridge University
  Tragedy in E-Lit, Nov '07
Hypertext '07: Tragedy in E-Lit
Host for Tinderbox Cambridge '07
Keynote: Dickinson State Uni Conf
Upper Midwest NCHC'07: Speaker
eNarrative 6: Creative Nonfiction
HT'05: "Philadelphia Fullerine"
  Nelson award winning paper
NCHC '05:
 Nurturing Independent Scholarship
Riddick Practicum:
  Building Meeting Good Will
NCHC '04:
  Philadelphia Fullerine
  Lecture on American Studies
WWW@10: Nonfiction on the Web
NCHC '03: Parliamentary Procedure
ELL '03 -- Gawain Superstar
• (a)Musing (ad)Dictions:

Ideas. Tools. Art. Build --not buy. What works, what doesn't. Enjoy new media and software aesthetics at Tekka.

Confessed Tinderbox users share ideas at the Tinderbox Wiki.

Listen and learn. WITF's Dr. Dick's insightful, informative music blog.

Smiling Cultural Studies: James Lileks

Artistic computing: Paul Graham

Theodore Gray (The Magic Black Box)

Faith, Life, Art, Academics. Sermons from my family away from home: Eden Chapel!

My other home: The Cambridge Union Society (in 2007, I designed our [Fresher's Guide])

• Hypertext/Writing

Writing the Living Web

President of Eastgate Systems, hypertext expert Mark Bernstein. (Electronic) Literature, cooking, art, etc.

Hypertext, blogging, and game theory: Jill Walker.

• Stats

Chapter I: Born. Lived. Died.

There is a Chapter II.

Locale: Lancaster County Pa, USA

Lineage: Guatemala

Religion: My faith is the primary focus of my life, influencing each part of me. I have been forgiven, cleansed, and empowered by Jesus Christ. Without him, I am a very thoughtful, competent idiot. With him, I am all I need to be, all I could ever hope for. I oppose institutional religious stagnation, but getting together with others is a good idea. God is real. Jesus Christ is his Son, and the Bible is true. Faith is not human effort. It's human choice. I try to be the most listening, understanding, and generous person I can.

Skills: Everything I can learn. Primary focus: Writing. Trumpet (since age 8), Parliamentary Procedure, classical guitar (since age 20), juggling, stage/coin magic, road cycling, hypertext, computer programming, electronic document processing, system administration, GNU/Linux, photography, graphics design, historical research, balsa aircraft building. Public speaking etc.

Interests: I am a polymath, therefore: anything I can learn. Current primary focus: writing, and thus everything else. Recycling, road cycling, nonfiction reading, classic movies, hypertext, computers, Software Freedom, language, art, photography, cartography, biography, ecology, science, psychology, law, government, politics (but not mindless insanity), philosophy, history, pedagogy, music, culture, sculpture. If it's learnable, I'm so there.

When possible, I like to integrate these things.

Education: Private school K-3. Home educated 4-12. Graduated Summa Cum Laude from Elizabethtown College in Jan 2006. As the 2006 Davies-Jackson Scholar, I go up to St. John's College, Cambridge University to read English in Oct 2006.

Alum of the Elizabethtown College Honors Program, sponsored by the Hershey Company.

Review -- mSQL and mySQL

by Randy Jay Yarger, George Reese, and Tom King

O'Reilly Press, 467 Pages

Databases are an essential part of the daily operation of many businesses and web sites. MySQL, & mSQL, by Rany Jay Yarger, George Reese, and Tim King, attempts to fill the vacuum of information on mid-sized databases. It explains the history, usage, and functionality of today's most popular "free" midrange databases, MySQL and mSQL, along with a description of proper relational database design. It includes instructions for database administration, and provides useful references on using both mSQL and MySQL with programming languages. In short, it includes everything needed to effectively implement MySQL and mSQL databases.

Unfortunately, though the book contains a great amount of helpful information, it is not very easy to read. Concepts are presented in a factual and efficient manner, but the concepts themselves are not organized very logically or sequentially. This tends to make it difficult to read from beginning to end.

Still, the has the trademark O'Reilly quality level of technical information. It can best be used when searching for a specific topic or problem, and the SQL reference it contains as well as the programming language guides to database integration make this book an invaluable tool.

A random scriptural musing from the archive:
[Community in the Gospel]:-: []
Jonathan says:

What do we offer people? To be in Christ...

To be "in Christ" for a Westerner is an individual experience

To be "in Christ" for Paul is a shared experience with the Community in

communion & fellowship with the Trinity!

Which of these do you prefer? This is a false dilemma.