jonathan stegall

So, following the previous post about my Ubuntu dual boot woes, today I have successfully set up a dual boot of XP and Ubuntu.

Steps taken

Steps that did not work

1. Download Ubuntu desktop install file again, as the original CD started showing up with errors in testing

   It’s important to note that I did check the disk for errors before attempting any initial install procedure.

2. Test new install CD - errors reported

Steps that worked

1. Download Ubuntu Server edition and create CD. Test for errors, receive none.

2. Install Ubuntu server, following instructions in the prompts and choosing to create dual boot with XP

   This really was as easy as it sounds. The prompts were fairly similar to the prompts one sees while installing Windows from a CD. Prompts were used to set localization, profile username/password, and so on.

   For partitioning, I chose to leave my master drive untouched, and install Ubuntu on an empty slave drive (which was an option). I created a partition for /home, /root, and /etc. After this, the installer placed GRUB into the master drive for me, allowing the dual boot to occur successfully. I tested both systems boots before continuing.

   At this time, I was booting into an Ubuntu server that was exclusively a command line terminal.

3. Install GNOME GUI to cause Ubuntu to act like a desktop as well as a server. This was done through the following command:

   sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

4. Feel proud of myself

Woo hoo.

So I’m a somewhat casual user of Facebook. I’m interested in learning how to take advantage of the Developer tools, and it’s fun to find random people I know, and I appreciate the fact that it doesn’t allow people to create crappy “layouts” like MySpace does.

There. I’ve said it. I have a Facebook account. On to my point.

I noticed that there’s a group with the purpose of taking a stand against close-mindedness and intolerance. Part of its description is as follows:

There is more than one point of view about every topic and some people are too closed minded to see that. I can no longer tolerate people who cant open their mind to other people’s beliefs or opinions. Just because it’s not what you believe doesn’t mean it’s wrong.. have respect for others.

Fair enough. The title of the group is, though, “I HATE ignorant and closeminded people.” Honest. Classic.

I had hoped to delay this post until I encountered some degree of victory, but that doesn’t look like it’s coming anytime soon. Plus, of course, we should always have the courage to speak in the midst of difficulties, and all that mess.

I’ve been trying to install Ubuntu Linux on my desktop for over a week now. I’m interested in learning Linux for its own sake, and in running web applications (like PHP, MySQL, Ruby, Python, etc) in a more native environment. I’ve reformatted my hard drive (I have backups this time) several times due to these attempts. I have never gotten Ubuntu to load successfully, but obviously I have lost Windows several times.

Failed Attempts and Current Messiness

I’ve tried the following steps in an attempt to have a working Ubuntu and XP:

1. XP Master Drive, Ubuntu Slave Drive, no other configuration - this was done by selecting use entire slave drive in the install dialogue.
   • Resulted in having to format the master drive due to Windows not booting.
2. Unplug XP drive, install Ubuntu on slave drive, using entire drive, replug Ubuntu slave drive.
   • Resulted in having to format the master drive due to Windows not booting.
3. XP Master Drive, Ubuntu Slave Drive using entire drive, instructing Ubuntu to put GRUB onto the master drive.
   • Resulted in having to format the master drive due to Windows not booting.
4. Partition master drive with first partition NTFS and XP, second partition Fat32 and Ubuntu, use slave drive for storage.
   • Resulted in having to format the master drive due to Windows not booting.
5. Install XP on the master drive first partition, leaving ~10 gigs of unpartitioned space. Then, using the Ubuntu manual partition to create the / partition at 8 gigs, the swap partition at 1 gig, and the /home partition set to use the entirety of the slave drive.
   • After the install process, Ubuntu did not ask me to reboot my system, and when I rebooted it myself it gave several errors in a list, and stopped shutting down. Windows did successfully boot after this, but when I booted from the GRUB CD, it did not find an Ubuntu installation.
   • This is the current state of my hard drive. The master has Windows on it with ~10 gigs of unpartitioned space. The slave drive is empty. Windows does not recognize it, which I’m assuming means that the Linux install did format it as FAT32.

As noted, several attempts have resulted in Windows being unable to boot. I suspect at least some of it has been due to Ubuntu being unable to boot, as well, but I can’t verify that. Fixmbr has never worked, bootcfg has never worked, and the GRUB CD hasn’t worked. Formatting both drives again and reinstalling Windows has been the only thing thus far that has resulted in a boot of anything.

With the GBUB CD, I’ve tried all the various options that are under GNU/Linux in an attempt to boot Ubuntu after it has been installed. GRUB typically does recognize that Ubuntu is present, but it is always unable to boot it or create the MBR.

When running the Ubuntu installer, it once gave me an error related to creating the user, and then it appeared to continue installing, but didn’t work. Other times, it has gone through the install process, and then appeared to finish. It didn’t ask me to reboot, though.

Looking Forward

In some way, I still hold on to the hope that in the near future, I will have a working copy of XP and Ubuntu, on the same computer. Ha.

After Wikipedia’s entry, emergingchurch.info is the number one Google result for the term “emerging church.” I’ve had this site around in my bookmarks and as a fairly common visit for several years, and it’s an amazing resource, but it had been a while since I visited it. Now, they have a prayer lava lamp. This is a nice Flash application that lets users type in prayers, and watch them float around as blobs inside the lava lamp. They’re not stored anywhere, so they remain private. The application, then, is a visual aid to private prayer. It can sit in a tiny window of one’s web browser while other tasks are being done.

Now, the designer/developer in me wants to create an AIR application out of this, so people could install it on their desktops.

But apart from that, I’m interested by this concept. I believe that spirituality goes through seasons, just like people north of Florida do. During the time that I’ve known Jesus, my attempts at prayer have been nothing if not varied. For a time during high school, I had a schedule that allowed me to play music and devote myself to prayer for extended periods of time. I am thankful for this, and extremely aware of concrete as well as abstract differences that that season made in my life.

During college, this was typically not possible for me, and prayer took on a different shape. For the majority of the time I was in college, I worked as a night shift custodian, and was often able to spend significant parts of my shift alone, thinking and meditating and communicating with God. Have you ever talked to God while mopping a floor? It can be a powerful thing. Again, I am thankful for this, and am extremely aware of the differences that that season made in my life.

More recently, I find myself needing a new season. I’ve often questioned what part technology and related things could or should play in my spirituality. I passionately believe that spirituality has to permeate all of life to be most effective. I don’t believe in compartmentalizing life, and saying, “Well God, this is my computer. You don’t have anything to do with that. Wait till I go to church on Sunday.” Or “Wait till I get home, and I’ll talk to you right before I fall asleep (Dear God, … ). It’s like saying to God, “You don’t understand this part of my life. Let me deal with it.”

Not that most people would ever bother to say this, but we typically don’t act like we believe God really understands us. Like he knows what’s going on in our lives. We think Jesus is really nice, and maybe sometimes really useful, and that he had a lot of nice sayings that might be good to quote at random times, or print on posters of sheep and hang on our walls. But we act like we don’t think he’s very smart. Dallas Willard has brilliant treatments of these ideas in books like Divine Conspiracy.

I feel that things like the lava lamp of prayer are relevant to these ideas. I feel that blogging is relevant to these ideas. May we pray as we can, and not as we cannot…

From Yahoo:

75-year-old Sigbritt Lothberg is now cruising the Internet with a dizzying speed. Lothberg’s 40 gigabits-per-second fiber-optic connection in Karlstad is believed to be the fastest residential uplink in the world, Karlstad city officials said. In less than 2 seconds, Lothberg can download a full-length movie on her home computer…

I’m amazed by this. The implications of Internet connections becoming this fast are insane. I think this is another pointer to Everyware. While that excites me, it scares me.

As election anticipation continues to grow around the country, for more reasons than one, I want to post the initial thoughts I’ve been developing for the last few months. I don’t want to give the impression that this blog is going to become political. There are plenty of those. But politics is part of life. It’s part of culture. It’s part of my life.

Design is about life. Design is about culture. Faith is about life. Faith exists within, and transcends, culture. If this is a blog about faith, it can also be a blog about design, and it can also mention politics, without losing any of its identity.

With that said, it needs to be said that I tend to be very cynical about government and politics. I’m a pacifist. I don’t identify with a political party. I have a bit of a conspiracy theorist streak in the way I view politics in our country. I passionately believe in the separation of church and state, and that there is no such thing, and shouldn’t be any such thing, as a Christian nation. I don’t believe in voting on one issue, whatever the issue is, and I don’t have any problem with not voting at all in an election if I don’t feel that there is a choice I can truly support. But I do believe in hope. I believe in looking for something I can support. I believe that faith and spirituality can and should speak prophetically to government and politics, and that it can and should influence government and politics without succumbing to the lure of influence.

As we proceed toward the 2008 election, I have some hope, and I want to present my hopes. I want to have a voice, even if that voice isn’t heard in the end.

First of all, I am amazed by Ron Paul. If I had to vote today, I’d vote for him. I don’t know that I have enough faith in the American people to overcome the constant talk of terrorism and war and big government with little freedom to actually vote him through a primary, especially in the Republican Party, but I am amazed by him. I’m amazed that he’s the only Republican candidate, and almost the only candidate period, who has opposed the Iraq war from the beginning. I’m amazed that he opposes the idea that America is the world’s police, mandated to push our way of life on the rest of the world and get angry and defensive when they don’t like it. I’m happy that he opposes the Patriot Act, and actually supports the Constitution.

I don’t necessarily agree with all of his positions, but he is consistent. I believe he is trustworthy. I believe he would be an amazing president; one that I could honestly respect and support. I think he offers hope to those in our country who are disillusioned by politics. I’m amazed by the idea that I can even say that at all.

Ron Paul is by far the only Republican candidate that interests me at this point. I think Giuliani is in the running because he can talk loudly about terrorism. A country that lives in fear seeks people who appear strong in the face of its fear. Romney offers us more support of the death penalty. And McCain offers us more support of the war.

Although I don’t want to appear a partisan liberal, I have more interest in the Democratic candidates, aside from Ron Paul. I’m interested in John Edwards and his campaign against poverty. God’s heart is always for the poor, and this is an incredibly important issue for me. I’m also interested in Barack Obama, because I feel that he has a powerful message. I want to trust him and his views on the poor, and on the war, and the other issues that he is pushing. I think he also offers hope to the disillusioned. While I am all in favor of the idea of a woman president, I’m not, at this point, in favor of Hillary being that woman. In addition to other issues I have with some of her past and current positions, I feel better about the Clintons than I do the Bushes, but I have a strong distaste for family politics.

Now that I’ve gotten this off my chest, I want to again emphasize that these are initial thoughts. I feel that they are careful thoughts. I’ve been turning them over in my mind for several months, and feel comfortable with them. But they are initial thoughts. Things can change. But I have hope for this election, and that’s a big deal.

Although I find it difficult to write about Cornerstone and cram a week’s worth of thoughts into a post or two, I want to try before it becomes too far in the past.

Thoughts on the Music

This year, Cornerstone had lots of great metal. Lots and lots. There was almost no goth. But between the great metal and the other miscellaneous things, there was still a lot of great music to be seen and heard.

My favorite show this year was No Longer Music. I’ve known about this band and the ministry behind it, Steiger, for several years, but had never seen them. They have created an amazing show, and it goes into amazing places and God does amazing things with it. Since I met Jesus, I have wanted to follow in the footsteps of people like them. More so now, I think.

Thoughts on Seminars

Kiera and I go to a bunch of seminars at each Cornerstone. The hardest part for us is picking which ones we’re going to attend, because there are usually several we’d like to see at any given time. Due to this, we miss some good ones. This year, Shane Claiborne did a seminar that we missed. I hope to be able to see him another time.

David Pierce, the lead singer of No Longer Music, held a powerful seminar. Coming from the position he does, he has a lot of unique stories and experiences to share, and principles from those things. While there were several other amazing seminars that we attended, I think his was the one that I needed to hear the most.

The underground has many unique characteristics; some good and some bad. Sometimes, it’s easy to focus on one or the other, and forget things that might otherwise be seen. This seminar reminded me of this, and I think that’s essential. It reminded me that the way to see the power of God move in the underground is to bring the Cross to the underground. The compassion, the engaging entrance into the lives and troubles of humanity that the Cross represents, is what we have to offer. While this isn’t new at all (since Paul wrote it), and I’ve been blessed to share things like this in other contexts, it’s amazing to hear stories of God moving through this in unexpected places.. in places where I want to be used.

Thoughts on Other Stuff

I think what keeps people coming back to Cornerstone year after year is the community. The opportunity to be around like-minded people, learning from them, having dialogue with them, experiencing God with them, having fun with them, and all of it happening while camping on a 500 acre farm in the middle of nowhere.. miles away from the nearest city. For me, miles away from Internet access. Miles away from the need to be working on stuff.

We tend to see some of the same people each year, and meet new people. I like it that way. Can’t get enough of the things some people have to say, and always love being around them, but it’s always nice to see and hear and meet new ones.

I haven’t had a chance to post on this yet, but the new version of the Underground Railroad went live last week, just before my wife and I left for Cornerstone (which, I hope to write a couple of posts about).

It’s important to note that this new site isn’t what you would call complete. New features are in the works for both long and short term development, and the site is built in such a way that it is easy to add new features and new content.

About the Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad is an organization that seeks to network ministries that work with underground and alternative subcultures. At this time, I know of connected ministries in the United States, Canada, and several countries in Europe. I believe there are also ministries in Asia and South America that will be added in the near future.

This illustrates the fact that underground culture is worldwide, and that God is doing things in the underground worldwide. Dissatisfaction with the mainstream is worldwide because something of a mainstream is worldwide, and there’s a unity that can be found in that.

About the website

The website of the Underground Railroad is something I’ve been privileged to be a part of since 2002, when a friend introduced me to it. This new version has been in the works for some time. Over a year, at least. For most of my time in college, I was married, working fulltime, and attending school fulltime, and didn’t have as much time to work on awesome projects like this. Since I finished college in December, my freetime went up a bit and I was able to finish the site.

In any case, I was responsible for the design and development of the new site, as well as some of the new content. Other parts of the new content are still pending, but believe me when I say it’s better that the new site be up with pending content than that the old one have lived through another Cornerstone.

As far as design and front end structure, I feel that there’s a clean, dark look for the most part, and that it’s somewhat minimalistic. Part of this is intentional, and part of it is due to the slowness that often comes with receiving graphical material from so many different sources. I intentionally avoided the use of a lot of generic stock photography, but I do hope to include relevant photos as the site continues to develop and receive input. Front end structure is generated by the back end system, and is written to be valid XHTML 1.1, with valid CSS. I’ve never done a site to the 1.1 specification, and thought I’d give it a try.

The back end is written in PHP 5, with a MySQL 5 database. As much of the PHP is object oriented as my knowledge allows, which I’ve found to be more than I thought it was. While I can’t claim that this is an MVC Content Management System by any means, I feel that it is a cleanly coded system. This is by far the biggest project I’ve done with PHP, and has proven to be quite the learning experience.

What now?

Now, there are several other projects that will begin to require attention. Some are ministry related. One of the most important to me is, again, designing this blog. Let’s hope that begins soon.