mahiwaga

I'm not really all that mysterious

technical difficulties (mephisto failed to start properly)

So I can’t seem to log-in to my blog currently. What I ended up doing was trying something that may have untoward side-effects. (Which reminds me, I should probably backup my database.)

What my local setup is: Mac Mini 1.25 GHz PPC (G4) with 1 GB RAM running Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). I’m using the pre-installed version of Ruby (1.8.2) I then installed Mongrel (1.1.3)

  1. Checkout a fresh new copy of mephisto trunk (currently revision 3091 at this writing) to my hard drive: <pre>svn co http://svn.techno-weenie.net/projects/mephisto/trunk mephisto</pre>

  2. Freeze Rails to current release (2.0.2 at this writing) <pre>rake rails:freeze:edge TAG=rel_2-0-2</pre>

  3. Edit database.yml so that it matches my blog database on Dreamhost.

  4. Start mongrel: <pre>mongrel_rails start -d -e production -B</pre>

  5. Login at http://localhost:3000/admin

  6. Blog away.

  7. Cross my fingers that it doesn’t nuke my database, and that Mephisto is actually working on the remote side.

posted by Author's profile picture mahiwaga

giving up on rails on dreamhost

Since I’m only averaging about 500 hits per day, shared hosting should theoretically be sufficient for my purposes. Alas, Mephisto continually dies on Dreamhost, and since I couldn’t get my kludgery to work (mostly because I can’t seem to install the mysql gem on my local setup), I gave up completely and found a host that actually supports Rails.

Migrating was not exactly pain free, but hopefully my domain name will propagate completely by tomorrow or the next day. I’m not sure why Mephisto started failing to run on Dreamhost. My logs were not at all helpful.

Whatever. Hopefully, I’ll get a decent job starting this summer, and the webhosting fees will stop feeling so significant. Either that, or I’ve got to start using Adsense. And maybe I’ll end up migrating all my sites away from Dreamhost at this rate.

posted by Author's profile picture mahiwaga

avatar: the last airbender

Cartoons on Nickelodeon have always sparked my imagination since I was a little kid. From Dangermouse, to Belle and Sebastian, to the Seven Cities of Gold, I found myself transported to remote times and places.

So it’s not surprising that Nickelodeon hosts the show “Avatar: The Last Airbender” Set in a fantasy realm divided up into the four classical elements (air, water, fire, earth), it follows the fated Avatar—who can manipulate all four elements—in his quest to re-establish balance in the world. It has echoes of the Deathgate Cycle by Tracy Weiss and Margaret Hickman (of Dragonlance fame) which also literally sunders the world into four elemental planes. And it has a taste of Ursula K Le Guin’s Earthsea, which is itself borrows heavily from Taoist philosophy, and is also very interested in the maintenance of balance.

The creators of the show openly state that they were heavily influenced by such works of popular culture such as Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter.

The premise is that every generation, there is an Avatar born, who is the only person able to control more than one element, and whose task is to maintain balance in the world. There is a cyclic rotation as to which culture the Avatar is born into. The current Avatar is named Aang, a 12 year old boy born of the Air Nomads, who tries to run-away from his destiny, and ends up in suspended animation for 100 years. The Avatar before him was Roku, from the Fire Nation. (And it’s probably just coincidence, but Roku’s home and final resting place is forever known as Roku’s Island, which evokes the Isle of Roke in Earthsea. And Roku and Firelord Sozin’s battle against the volcano reminded me of Ursula K Le Guin’s short story “The Bones of the Earth” which depicts a similar battle pitting an impending earthquake against the mage Ogion and his master Heleth.)

After Roku is killed, the Firelord Sozin finds himself free to pursue his imperialistic ends. The Fire Nation commits genocide against the Air Nomads, in an unsuccessful bid to destroy the next Avatar. But with Aang locked up in ice, the Fire Nation is able to freely assail the Water Tribes and the Earth Kingdom.

Interestingly, Sozin’s rationale for warring against his neighbors is the notion of spreading the Fire Nation’s prosperity and wealth to the less fortunate cultures. Avatar: The Last Airbender strikes me as a bold allegory concerning American Imperialism, and Sozin’s rationale recalls W’s sophist arguments for invading Iraq: to spread Freedom™ and Democracy™. The fear evoked by the Fire Nation parallels how the U.S. has grown to be hated and feared in many corners of the world. The advanced industrialization and resultant pollution of the environment by the Fire Nation also speaks of American excess.

But the Fire Nation, like any imperial power in the history of humanity, is not made up of cookie-cutter nameless, featureless evildoers. Like any culture, it is replete not only with the diabolic and the divine, but also all the shades in between. The last Avatar, Roku, after all, was from the Fire Nation. The characters of Iroh and Zoku also depict the conflict inherent in persons who strive to do what is good and honorable, but who are enmeshed in an imperial endeavor. The children of the Fire Nation are not demonic imps intent on destroying the world, but just regular children who are constantly spoon-fed brain-killing propaganda about the greatness of the Fire Nation.

What is most interesting is that the goal of the protagonists is not to destroy the Fire Nation, but rather, to re-establish balance.

Implicit in this notion is that industrialization is not in of itself necessarily evil (in stark contrast to J.R.R. Tolkien’s apparent position.) The goal of the Way is not the occlusion of progress, but its moderation. The smooth ebb and flow of fortune is preferable to the boom-and-bust discontinuities inherent in capitalism. A smooth gradation in incomes and wealth is more ideal than the stark disparities between rich and poor in our society. And a balance of power, even if it means we are locked within the insanity of mutually assured destruction, is better than one nation wielding all the power.

Pretty deep shit for a cartoon targeting 6-11 year olds!

posted by Author's profile picture mahiwaga