Archive for May, 2009

26MayIs Athorism a religion?

In reply to a ridiculous comment on omninerd.com, the follow blog is an analogue of the original text.

This is an old debate.

1. athorism – having no belief in Thor. Like a child before being made aware that Thor exists.

2. Athorism – not believing Thor exists.

The difference is significant but often difficult to comprehend and maintain:

2. Athorism. - No-one can say there for certain that Thor does not exist, especially since science abandoned its belief that there was no Valhalla. Science does not like something from nothing so it leaves open the possibility of the Thor hypotheses. Asserting that Thor does not exist is therefore a belief.  Hence the capital A for the proper noun use of Athorism here.

1. athorism - Once a person is aware of death, and the belief in Valhalla and Thor, it becomes very difficult to maintain the innocence of childhood. At best one can say – I see no evidence to support the Thor hypothesis. For instance many scientists rejected the continental drift hypotheses by saying – I see no evidence for the hypothesis. They were proved wrong and the continental drift hypotheses moved into the realm of science fact.

Accepting the Thor hypotheses but seeing no evidence for it sounds like agnostic –  a recently invented word used to describe those who don’t know but believe it is possible that Thor exists.

Posted by Tanin in Religion. 0 Comments

03MayHow to use the awesomely simple tanin.nl URL shrinking service

This article presumes you know what a URL shrinking service is and why you would use it. I will not get into that here.

For Users:

Tanin.nl allows you to create distinct tiny URL’s from virtually any site. Here’s how:

  • Drag the following link to your bookmarks: Shrink This URL with Tanin.nl
  • Once you’re on a page that you would like to shrink the URL of, simply click on the bookmarked link.
  • You will get a message asking you to confirm your request and if you accept and all goes well, your new shrunken URL will be presented to you.

For Developers:

Tanin.nl supports an API that is similar to that of tinyURL.
The URL is:
http://tanin.nl/s/api-create.php?u=
Example:

/* Sample function */

function shrink_with_tanin($u){
	return file_get_contents('http://tanin.nl/s/api-create.php?u='.$u);
}

/* function usage */

$url = 'http://0xtc.com/';
$shrunkurl= shrink_with_tanin($url);
echo('Shrunk "'.$url.'" to "'.$shrunkurl.'"');

Ta-da! That’s pretty much it. Enjoy.

PS: If you’re using Google’s Chrome, you may want to hit CTRL+b to reveal the bookmarks bar.

Posted by Tanin in Coding. 0 Comments