Bill Watterson's Political Cartoons

While attending Kenyon College, Bill Watterson (the author of Calvin and Hobbes) was editorial cartoonist for the school newspaper, The Kenyon Collegian.  Most weeks during his tenure, they printed a cartoon of his, usually a political cartoon.  Since the Kenyon Collegian's archives are available online, you can see them all.  The following is a complete set of links to issues of the Kenyon Collegian that have these cartoons: 

• Volume CIV (1976-1977), issues 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27
• Volume CV (1977-1978), issues 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26
• Volume CVI (1978-1979), issues 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24
• Volume CVII (1979-1980), issues 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27

It's Rational to Believe in Jesus

So says Aron Wall (and me).  He has posted a fair amount of material on his web site that explains how believing what the Bible says about Jesus can be rational.  Several of those postings amount to as good a case for Christianity as I've seen expressed anywhere, so I'm posting links to them for your benefit (and my own; I will re-read them).  They are listed in an order that I think makes sense for them to be read if they were to be read in sequence.

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There is good evidence that Jesus was resurrected from the dead and that he is the Messiah:

1. Can Religion Be Based on Evidence?
2. Theology: Less Speculative than Quantum Gravity
3. Christianity Is Based on Observations
4. Let Us Calculate
5. Christianity Is True

The Old Testament part of the Bible is not a fabrication:

• Some Comments on Biblical History

Christianity is more likely to be true than other religions:

1. Introduction
2. World Evangelism
3. Ancient Roots
4. Supernatural Claims
5. Historical Accounts
6. Early Sources

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Note: I don't know Aron Wall personally; I've just read his blog and agree with his approach to Christian apologetics.

How to Transfer User TonePrints from One Windows PC to Another

This post is for anyone who has TonePrints for a TC Electronic effect pedal on one computer and wants to transfer them to another computer.

Version 4.1.06 of the TonePrint application stores user TonePrints in a file named "database.sqlite3" in the user's app data folder, which, in Windows 10, is a hidden folder named "C:\Users\[user name]\AppData\Roaming".  If you want to replace your user TonePrints on one computer with user TonePrints from another computer, just copy this file from the one computer to the other.

If you want to copy TonePrints from one PC to another, but you want to keep your old TonePrints, too, simply copying the file won't work, because it will overwrite TonePrints.  For that purpose, I wrote some scripts for Windows PC that will grab TonePrints from one PC and install them on another PC without deleting the TonePrints that are already there.  You can download them in a zip file here:

• TonePrint_transfer.zip

To use them, download the zip file, extract the contents to an empty folder, then follow the instructions in the file named "README.txt" that is included in the zip file.  They should work with version 4.1.06 of the PC TonePrint application.

I don't know how to transfer user TonePrints from a smartphone to a PC, or vice versa.  The smartphone app might have a database.sqlite3, but I have not been able to locate it on my phone.

UPDATE: the scripts won't work for new versions of the TonePrint application (e.g. 4.4.03).  The database file name apparently changed to "databaseV1.sqlite3" or something.

How to Build & Run Vampire ATP in Cygwin

Vampire is an Automated Theorem Prover.  It was apparently developed on Linux, but it can be run on Windows using Cygwin, which provides the build tools, software packages and operating system services that Vampire depends on.  Here are some instructions for building and running Vampire in 64-bit Windows 10.  A note on building Vampire with Cygwin can be found on Vampire's GitHub page, here.

Install Cygwin:

1. Install Cygwin and its default packages.
2. Install these Cygwin packages:
   
   • cygrunsrv
   • gcc-core
   • gcc-g++
   • make
   • zlib
   • zlib-devel
   • zlib-devel
   • zlib0
3. Move C:\cygwin64\bin to the front of the %PATH% environment variable.

Install Git Command-Line Tools

1. Install the Git command-line tools.  An installer can be downloaded from https://git-scm.com/download/win.

Install the Z3 Theorem Prover

1. Download a Win64 release of Z3 from https://github.com/Z3Prover/z3/releases.
2. Make z3.dll available from PATH, either by putting z3.dll from this release in some folder that is in PATH, or by adding the Z3 "bin" folder to PATH.

Build Vampire

1. Pull Vampire's Git repository from GitHub (https://github.com/vprover/vampire).
2. In Vampire's Makefile, add "-D_GNU_SOURCE" to CXXFLAGS and CCFLAGS.
3. Change all instances of "exit(0);" in the source code to "_Exit(0);".  This is needed to prevent the child processes forked by the main Vampire process from calling the main process' atexit handlers.
4. Create a folder named "include" in the Vampire repository's main folder.
5. Copy the contents of the Z3 "bin" folder to that "include" folder.
6. Compile and link vampire by issuing the command "make vampire_z3_rel" from a command prompt.

Start the Cygwin Windows Service

1. Start Cygwin's bash shell.
2. From the bash command prompt, issue the command "cygserver-config" to configure the Cygwin Windows service.
3. In Windows, right-click "This PC", select "Manage", then select "Services and Applications, then select "Services", then start the "CYGWIN cygserver" service.

 Run Vampire

1. Run Vampire from a command prompt.  For example:
   vampire_z3_rel_master_4055 --mode casc -t 300 "Problems\SET\SET159-6.p"
2. Vampire may not succeed in deleting the semaphores that it creates in the Cygwin server.  To delete them, issue the command "ipcs -s | grep '^s\\s' | cut -d' ' -f3|xargs -n 1 ipcrm -s" from a command prompt.  Alternatively, add a call to system() at the end of Vampire's main function that issues this command.