Category: History

Anything that has to do with history.

New face, new forum

For the one or two besides me who actually visit the site, you’ll notice a change in looks. I stumbled upon this theme a few days ago, and thought to give it a try. Historically speaking, well actually it’s very forward thinking, this theme employs a cool idea. The theme is funded by a couple of sites, and all they require is to have their links un-obtrusively available in the footer at all times. So, you can use the theme free if you become a billboard for the funders. They are not inappropriate sites, so I don’t mind using the theme.

You might also notice a new page tab towards the top called DigitalMaps. This links to a forum I set up for my Hist 798 class at GMU this semester. We’re going to make an atlas. Check out the forum for our class ideas and progress. We’re going to present our work at THATCamp (mentioned in the previous post). Should be lots of fun.

The greatest minds went river boarding.

When I was in high school, my friends and I would go down to the Salt River, tie one end of a ski rope to a tree, and the other end to our home made river boards. These were generally three foot diameter circular pieces of plywood, carefully and lovingly designed, painted and created by me and my friends. We’d throw the board into the middle of the river (this used in the broadest sense of the term, since Arizona isn’t too well known for flowing bodies of water), jump on and ride the current. We’d jump the board and do tricks like head stands, hand stands, back flips, etc. It was the source of very fond memories.

Well, imagine my surprise, when looking up some information about Wernher von Braun for a school paper today, and here he is, “water-boarding” in the middle of the Tennessee River! Wernher von Braun, enigmatic rocket man! Creator of the U.S. missile and space program! Rocket genius! and River Boarder! Awesome!

Wernher von Braun on a river board

Stuhlinger, Ernst. Wernher Von Braun, Crusader for Space: An Illustrated Memoir. Malabar, Fla: Krieger Pub. Co, 1994, page 39.

Evolution and history of the computer interface, Macintosh style.

Appleinsider is my go to source for Mac news. What I really like about their articles are the in depth, historical explanations of Mac’s new OS features. Some places just tell you what’s new, but appleinsider gives you the background and history of what led to this change or feature. It’s really pretty nifty.

Here are a few favorites about:
The Doc
Virtual Desktops (Spaces)
The Mail application
TimeMachine (backup up utility)

Good to know what to look forward to, and how it came to be.

Tabledump

I had the need once again to dump only certain tables from a database, instead of all 100+ tables. This was where I had a database with about 5-8 wordpress installs. I wanted to backup all of the tables for only one install. There is a way with mysqldump to do this, by listing out all of the tables you want to dump. So I just wrote a bash script to take care of making the list of tables to dump.

It has an array of database table names (without the common prefix) in the script. Then it prompts for the mysql user, database, and prefix. It could be changed to prompt for a file that contains a list or array of table names.

Anyhow, here it is for anyone’s use:

[code lang=”Bash”]
#!/bin/bash

#—————————————–#
# Ammon Shepherd #
# 09.05.07 #
# Dump a database with only the tables #
# containing the prefix given. #
#—————————————–#

echo “This will dump just the tables with the specified prefix from the specified database.”

echo -n “Enter the database name: ”
read dbase

echo -n “Enter the table prefix: ”
read prefix

echo -n “The mysql user: ”
read sqluser
echo -n “The mysql pass: ”
read -s sqlpass

# Get list of tables with the desired prefix
list=( $(mysql -u$sqluser -p$sqlpass $dbase –raw –silent –silent –execute=”SHOW TABLES;”) )

for tablename in ${list[@]}
do
if [[ “$tablename” =~ $prefix ]]; then
tablelist+=”$tablename ”
fi
done

`mysqldump -u$sqluser -p$sqlpass –opt $dbase $tablelist > $dbase.$prefix.bak.sql`

echo

exit 0

[/code]

History of special effects.

Who doesn’t love a good special effects movie? Of course, when you can’t tell that there are special effects, that’s when you know it’s a good movie.

I stumbled upon this article at AmericanHeritage.com, that describes the beginnings of Industrial Light & Magic, George Lucas’ personal special effects company, makers of all cool films (especially Star Wars). This article also describes another sort of paradigm shift in the film industry.

Personally, these types of effects are my favorite. Using real things in innovative ways. I think it’s unfortunate, in a way, that so many of the stunts and effects are digital. I like the good, old fashioned effects where objects are real, made from real things, like the mother ship on “Close Encounters of The Third Kind” (the movie I haven’t seen, but the ship I have).

MotherShip

Anyhow, it was a good article.

And, just as a side note, I always fear losing these web articles, until now. I use Zotero which allows me to store, sort, tag and view web pages, books, and all sorts of stuff. I’ll be using it to collect data for my research projects this year. It’s also made by the good guys at the Center for History and New Media, where I work. 🙂 – Shameless plug!

Nazi board games

Another rare double-day post.

I heard this on a PRI show “The World”. From the site: “The World’s Clark Boyd tells us about an auction taking place tomorrow in Britain. Some of the items up for bid are children’s board games made in Nazi Germany.”

The seller has to sell them in Britain because Nazi memorabilia is illegal in Germany.

Here’s a link to the show, complete with mp3 for your listening pleasure.