Psychoanalysis of The Joker – On Hold!

Moment of Madness – The Killing Joke

Due to the tragic developments in Aurora, Colorado, I have decided to delay publishing my thesis, “Psychoanalysis of The Joker”, by a few days. As of now, I have been closely following the James Holmes story and it doesn’t look good. You might have already read reports that he claimed that he was The Joker to the police. A lot of news outlets are running with this story, but so far, I am not sure if Aurora PD has confirmed it.

As usual, the media is going overboard and it is only a matter of time, before they start blaming Batman, comic books, video games, movies, in that order for this tragedy. True, one can be influenced by a lot of things, but, one delusional man’s actions can never be used as a point of gross generalization. But, you know how it works in the news media. They will have airheads on their programs who will start the blame game and badmouth just about anything or anyone, from the dark overtones in The Dark Knight saga to people like Frank Miller. It’s no wonder why many Batman related pages on Wikipedia are currently locked.

I think we should remember that this is such a huge tragedy and wish for the well-being of everyone affected by this heinous act of violence and pray for the lives lost.

Tragedy such as last night’s is not predictable. Also, long-term mental illness does not sound like a logical cause for it. From what I have read so far, it is clear that there was meticulous planning leading to the massacre. Dropping out of UCD a month earlier, rigging his home with explosives and ammunition, it seems to me that James Holmes is someone, who is very much in charge of his own faculties. It suggests that he was willing to go the distance in waging a bloody battle to the very end. I may be dead wrong, but, let us wait before a complete picture of him emerges.

In conclusion, given the current circumstances, I am delaying publishing the article. I am not talking about an indefinite hold or a delay by a month or so. It would be just a few days. But, I will do something else. I wrote a lengthy article on Bane last night and I will put it here in a two-three part post over the weekend.

Aurora, Colorado Shootings

I just heard about the shootings last night at The Dark Knight Rises screening in Aurora, Colorado. My heart goes out to those who lost their loved ones and the ones who were injured. It would be tough for even the people who escaped unhurt. The trauma of having been in the middle of such an incident is more than sufficient to drive one crazy. May they all have the strength to recover from this awful shooting.

I don’t want to comment on this tragedy, until all the facts are out. Hopefully, we should learn more about James Holmes in the next few hours. What worries me though, is the fact that some idiotic pundit on one of the 24 hour news networks would start blaming The Dark Knight Rises for the shooting.

Tragedy seems to follow The Dark Knight Saga in one form or another.

Countdown to The Dark Knight Rises

This is an exciting week. The Dark Knight Rises comes out on Friday and from what I have read online, is supposed to kick some serious butt. The movie is getting released here in Germany only on 24th of this month, but still, I have begun my prep already. Apart from re-reading many comic books (Vengeance, Knightfall, Cataclysm, No Man’s Land etc.), I am also revamping my desktops and laptops to celebrate the release.

This post is related to such a revamp. The following screenshot is from my EEE box powered by OpenBSD 5.1 and running  ScrotWM. I just thought this minimal Bane wallpaper fit perfectly and the terminal colors are one of my ancient creations from years back, called, Colorado. Since, there were a few requests for the colors, let me post them right here. The media player is vitunes, which is an MPlayer frontend that has vi-like key bindings. I have spoken about it in one of my previous posts.

Without further ado, here is the screenshot. Click on the image for full view.

Preparation for The Dark Knight Rises

You can get the terminal colors from the following link.

Colorado Colors

If there’s any other information needed, please drop a note.

By the way, The Dark Knight Rises soundtrack is mega awesome. Gotham’s Reckoning and Imagine the Fire are spine-tingling.

Starting with this post, I will add more Batman related posts for the next couple of days. Keep watching this space.

July 20th 2012 – Psychoanalysis of The Joker

In other news, my psychoanalysis article has been progressing quite well. I am just taking time to make sure that it is devoid of errors. I wanted to mention here just quickly that I will make it available for download on the 20th of this month, coinciding with The Dark Knight Rises release. I will start posting articles and excerpts from the book, starting from 15th of this month culminating in the release of the book on 20th. So keep watching this space.

Scene next to Gloria Cinema in Stuttgart, Germany

Higgs Boson

What an awesome way to begin an otherwise mundane Wednesday! Discoveries like these give you the greatest motivation when you badly need it. ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN have indicated the presence of a new particle, whose mass falls in the region of 126 GeV. Although data from 2012 is still not completely analyzed, it is fantastic to learn that the final word will come out by the end of July. CERN is very good in keeping up with its promises, so let the celebrations begin early. To confirm the presence of Higgs Boson would be a great boost for Theoretical Physics. More proof that if it is done right, things will automatically fall in its place. Being a Theoretical Physics fanatic myself, you can understand my excitement on this matter. I woke up early in the morning, waiting for the webcast and subsequent press release.

For more, head to CERN’s main page by clicking on the following link.

Higgs within reach!

ToshibaTecra 8000 & Satellite 4030CDT

Over the weekend, I was given two old laptops by someone who knew about my computer collection and restoration projects. He gave me a Toshiba Tecra with Pentium II processor and a Satellite 4030CDT with Celeron. Bulky laptops, for sure. He himself wasn’t sure if they were working. I took the laptops home and decided to experiment. From my experience, such laptops usually present two challenges, namely, absence of adapter and either dead hard disk or the absence of one. I was fairly sure that the adapter wouldn’t be an issue, since, I have a Voltcraft Universal adapter for laptops that come with various pins for a variety of old laptops. Toshiba models are well covered. So, I could power both the machines up. Then a simple BIOS inspection showed that both the laptops lacked hard disks. Crap!

This led me to a visit to our local flea market, hunting for hard disks. I was lucky enough to find one laptop hard disk with the capacity of 6 Gigs for 5 bucks. Then the hack began. It was quite a thing to get the laptop opened and attaching the hard disk. But, fortunately it fit the Tecra laptop. Once done, it was time to test software.

First choice was OpenBSD 5.1. It installed just fine. Had to work a bit to get the proper X resolution. But, apart from that everything went fine. Next up was network. The laptop got no ethernet port. Fortunately, it has a usb port and I had a spare DLink DHub USB to ethernet port converter.  I got it long time ago when EEE 1000H model came out. You see, by the time the model came out, OpenBSD had support for the wireless chip on the machine, but not for the ethernet card. After doing some research, I settled down on the DLink device, since, it was well supported by the axe driver on OpenBSD. But, support for the 1000H ethernet port came about fairly quickly after my first install of OpenBSD, hence the DLink DHub was just lying around in my collection. It came in handy for the Toshiba. Hooked it up and it was all good. axe driver kills! Now, I have network on the Tecra 8000 as well.

I intend to keep the machine lean, since I gotta work with 256MB RAM. Only terminal programs are installed. I thought I could use this device exclusively to continue my Joker Project, hence, I call it The Joker Device.

Here are some pictures. Please ignore the shaky few pictures. My old hands are not that stable anymore.

Toshiba Tecra 8000

Toshiba Tecra 8000 – Shot 2

Toshiba Tecra 8000 – Shot 3

Now, a screenshot of OpenBSD 5.1 in action on the resurrected Laptop.

OpenBSD 5.1 with CWM

Once Tecra was restored, I turned my attention to the Satellite 4030CDT. Same issue as with the Tecra, no hard disk. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find an appropriate one for this little machine. I have started looking into Ebay and other sources. I am sure its just a matter of time before I find a disk. In the meantime, I was able to test other features of the laptop and I must say both Tecra and Satellite are worthy additions to the family. Here are a couple of pictures of the Satellite.

Toshiba Satellite 4030CDT – Shot 1

Toshiba Satellite 4030CDT – Shot 2

That was my weekend folks! It’s time to get back to The Joker Device for more writing.