Trinity Banter | David Chappell | Activity https://commons.trincoll.edu/members/chappell/activity/ Activity feed for David Chappell. Fri, 12 Jun 2026 19:29:28 -0400 https://buddypress.org/?v=9.2.0 en-US 30 hourly 2 276adb65acfdf48b5d420b536f9318f2 David Chappell wrote a new post, Words Without Burden: The Cosmonaut Ludmila Recording and its Misinterpretation, on the site Eclectic https://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=466 Thu, 13 Nov 2025 13:50:13 -0500 The so-called Cosmonaut Ludmila recording is of a series of radio transmissions intercepted by the Judica-Cordiglia brothers in May of 1961 on a channel which they believed was used by the Soviet space program. […]

[audio src="http://media.libsyn.com/media/skeptoid/mc_woman.mp3"]

]]> aa816aa7d8a34999b1cedabd0d6d55d6 David Chappell commented on the post, Nessus in the Role of a Tease, on the site Eclectic https://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/nessus-in-the-role-of-a-tease/#comment-12246 Fri, 17 Oct 2025 13:28:51 -0400 Nessus has done it again. They have confused two Internet Software Consortium projects. One of the Nessus plugins is supposed to make sure the BIND DNS server on Debian is at at least version 9.16.27-1~deb11u1, […]

]]> a98c8981e22cfd9a00f311d38dadfd1f David Chappell wrote a new post, Every Sound Soon Dies, on the site Eclectic https://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=458 Wed, 24 Sep 2025 09:34:02 -0400 Since my previous article on Marconi I have tracked down the source of the extraordinary assertion made in the Provincetown Independent that the radio pioneer believed “sound never disappears from Earth”.i All […]

]]> c861ed88a6829d3787c3bdb63863fee6 David Chappell wrote a new post, Nessus in the Role of a Tease, on the site Eclectic https://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=490 Fri, 22 Aug 2025 13:04:11 -0400 Nessus is a security scanner sold by a company called Tenable. It runs through a customer’s network checking to see whether the computers have any known defects which could undermine their […]

]]> f678d31ce8e9aa641f3d3b3f0dc9dbf8 David Chappell commented on the post, ChatGPT Hallucinates about Newton’s Faith, on the site Eclectic https://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/chatgpt-hallucinates-about-newtons-faith/#comment-11627 Mon, 19 May 2025 13:38:29 -0400 I think that is a function of the training data. Better understandings of the history and philosophy of science are starting to spread out of academia. But the simplistic narratives of Whig historiography which […]

]]> 5282a090d19b1b65b866bced16e7e97c David Chappell wrote a new post, ChatGPT Hallucinates about Newton’s Faith, on the site Eclectic https://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=469 Fri, 22 Nov 2024 15:36:59 -0500 We can learn much about how ChatGPT works from a single question. This question was posed to ChatGPT 3.5 on February 13, 2023.

Question

Why didn’t Newton accept the Trinity?

ChatGPT’s A […]

]]> da5c1f48b6025afa42931454a1a9a7ca David Chappell commented on the post, Where Did Sputnik Get its Name?, on the site Eclectic http://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/where-did-sputnik-get-its-name/#comment-10805 Sat, 05 Oct 2024 02:32:14 -0400 Within the Soviet space program the craft had the designation ПС-1 (Простейший Спутник-1, Minimal Satellite-1). Today in Russian it is sometimes called Спутник-1 (Satellite-1). This is the closest thing it has […]

]]> 16fd78a1ee1b54f9b752d88f1a038f41 David Chappell wrote a new post, Workaround for Diversity Visa Lottery Site Bugs, on the site Eclectic https://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=324 Fri, 04 Oct 2024 13:00:20 -0400 How to get around Connection Reset on DV Lottery application:

Increase the JPEG compression on your photos until they are 60KB or smaller. Keep the dimensions at the required 600 by 600 pixels.

If you […]

]]> d3aadc03c88b713fb2b609f3591cd340 David Chappell wrote a new post, You Need Verbs: Saying What Computers Do, on the site Eclectic https://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=205 Fri, 09 Aug 2024 13:00:13 -0400 Bad documentation says what things are. Good documentation says what they do.

The widespread contempt for grammar in society is one of my numerous hobby horses. In school I got the impression that […]

]]> 4ed6742ffc95cd57257efaab93efd48b David Chappell wrote a new post, No Rest for the Wicked, on the site Eclectic https://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=340 Tue, 09 Jul 2024 13:00:22 -0400 The phrase “no rest for the wicked” is an amalgam of two passages in the Bible book of Isaiah.

Chapter 48 verse 22 in the King James Version:

There is no peace, saith the LORD, unto the […]

]]> b0ea035945efa65f20fe18069ff98e2b David Chappell wrote a new post, First Review of <i>Star Wars</i> in the Soviet Union, on the site Eclectic https://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=436 Thu, 23 May 2024 21:08:48 -0400 This is the first review of Star Wars published in the Soviet Union. It appeared in the Literary Gazette, a Moscow weekly, on September 7, 1977.

It is unlikely the reviewer had had an opportunity to see […]

]]> b7626aa988a47970a581d56a03a6715d David Chappell wrote a new post, Double Negation, on the site Eclectic https://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=330 Thu, 09 May 2024 16:08:18 -0400 A few years ago a user on Stack Exchange asked why the construction used in this English sentence is not considered a double negative.

If I don’t use the microphone, nobody will hear me.

This […]

]]> 5634a400cec2016763bf40e3483077d8 David Chappell wrote a new post, Mystifying Marconi, on the site Eclectic https://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=358 Wed, 03 Jan 2024 00:04:13 -0500 My attention was recently drawn to an article in the Provincetown Independent entitled The Marconi Mythology. This makes the claim that “His ideas were derived from spiritualism, a pseudo-religious movement of […]

]]> 8defadebeb82d087aa8f7f99eaf4bbd3 David Chappell wrote a new post, Unsubscribing from Zoom Release Notes E-Mails, on the site Eclectic https://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=343 Sat, 11 Feb 2023 17:02:30 -0500 For a long time now Zoom has been sending release notes to the e-mail account I used to register. I didn’t want this and so I scrolled to the bottom looking for a way to unsubscribe, but found nothing. I also […]

]]> 8cc345c158325f8cb92a7a3e0e848fa2 David Chappell wrote a new post, Why All Capitals?, on the site Eclectic http://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=202 Sun, 17 Oct 2021 13:37:25 -0400 Q: Why do some users complete forms all in capital letters?

A: This is because early teleprinters and computer systems had no provision for lower case. Mixed case teleprinters came on the market in the […]

]]> 36318852148d8bf8d683b3124b078409 David Chappell wrote a new post, Walking on Hypothetical Legs, on the site Eclectic https://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=290 Fri, 17 Sep 2021 12:39:04 -0400 On September 1st a number of news outlets published stories about the discovery of the skeleton of a whale with four legs. If true, this would lend support to the popular theory that whales evolved from a […]

]]> 85f83d9a171e155db85614fab85271d9 David Chappell wrote a new post, Radio Shack brand may return online, on the site Eclectic http://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=242 Sat, 12 Dec 2020 14:41:28 -0500 The Radio Shack stores played a big role in my childhood. My first memory of Radio Shack is from around 1975 when I was six. I went with my dad when he bought new speaker cables. We went others times whenever our […]

]]> 5f1a103c78de79990811ebfc80460bcf David Chappell wrote a new post, How Stocks Work, on the site Eclectic http://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=199 Wed, 27 May 2020 16:44:52 -0400 For many years nobody could explain to me the rational basis of the stock market. They told me that prices were controlled by the law of supply and demand. Investors expected the the price of shares in […]

]]> dbcfbefdcd8d51e275e9b9196f94935b David Chappell wrote a new post, Review of the Sun Joe CJ603E Wood Chipper, on the site Eclectic http://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=191 Mon, 13 Apr 2020 14:18:50 -0400 Ever since I first saw them in a catalog years ago I have wanted own one of those garden waste chippers. Those I saw 30 years ago were made of metal and cost far more than I could justify paying. But consumer […]

]]> 94e77d553f37171dc174f6d78a5a9849 David Chappell wrote a new post, Where Did Sputnik Get its Name?, on the site Eclectic http://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=108 Wed, 25 Mar 2020 17:54:19 -0400 On October 5, 1957, the Soviet newspaper Pravda announced that the Soviet Union had launched a 184 pound object into Earth orbit. That first artificial satellite has since come to be known in the […]

]]> 81cfc88089b78916dc88bdd8139cd611 David Chappell wrote a new post, Updating Webmin's Self-Signed Certificate, on the site Eclectic http://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=161 Wed, 28 Aug 2019 15:50:21 -0400 When SSL is enable in Webmin it creates a self-signed certificate which is stored in the file /etc/webmin/miniserv.pem. I recently upgraded a server from Debian 7 to Debian 9 and discovered that Webmin would […]

]]> 4d102af2b1e9e90f19e975a716f1edb4 David Chappell wrote a new post, Darwin and Pasteur, on the site Eclectic http://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=122 Tue, 12 Feb 2019 19:38:08 -0500 On November 24th, 1859, the naturalist Charles Darwin published a book entitled On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. In it he […]

]]> a515fd64e81d8783e3c04b19ad62d369 David Chappell wrote a new post, Newton's Views on Science and Theology, on the site Eclectic http://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=120 Tue, 05 Feb 2019 17:47:03 -0500 For the second edition of his Principia in 1713 Newton wrote an essay known as the General Scolium (introduction) in which he defends his views on several scientific and theological questions. There is an […]

]]> 253dbe0e06d71f01ef808529e412de00 David Chappell wrote a new post, Institutional Memory, on the site Eclectic http://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=91 Thu, 11 Oct 2018 20:36:22 -0400 Knowledge is a slippery thing. If we don’t take care we can lose it. Organizations loose it when members leave or retire without passing it on to their replacements. Suddenly the organization does not know how […]

]]> 9ce5f4bb64b90bd48a3fe63003a3d3ff David Chappell wrote a new post, Fire Dogs, on the site Eclectic http://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=67 Wed, 03 Jan 2018 21:24:22 -0500 The following story is from Lev Tolstoy’s First Russian Reader of 1875. This is my translation. As far as I know it has never before appeared in English.

Fire Dogs
A True Story

It often […]

]]> 773eb48b3d27445d49e62bf8412779cc David Chappell commented on the post, Draco's Policies were Draconian, on the site Eclectic http://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/dracos-policies-were-draconian/#comment-1010 Tue, 02 Jan 2018 16:50:15 -0500 Draco was driven out of Athens to the island of Aegina where he spent the rest of his life. The story of his death in the Aegean theater comes from Suidas’ lexicon. The entry for “Draco” reads:

An Athenian […]

]]> f6161437498c35ab09a94abcf40d8d4e David Chappell wrote a new post, Electrical Power and Power Loss, on the site Eclectic http://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=33 Wed, 02 Mar 2016 16:18:50 -0500 Basic Electrical Units

A volt is a unit of electrical potential. Electrical potential in turn is the force which a power source (such as a battery) applies to a connected device in order to push electrons […]

]]> 933fb959c6c873163d7d34e884912efd David Chappell wrote a new post, Communicating Clearly About Computing, on the site Eclectic http://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=29 Thu, 14 Jan 2016 21:43:19 -0500 Those of use who work in IT are frequently called upon to explain our work to people who are less familiar with computers than we are. It should be our goal to speak and write as clearly as possible. To do that we […]

]]> 97b0ad7a960ab41bfae536f5e2534620 David Chappell wrote a new post, Waiting to Bite: BIND and Invalid Zone Files, on the site Eclectic http://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=36 Thu, 14 Jan 2016 21:34:42 -0500 It looks like Webmin lets you create DNS entries which BIND 9 does not like. When it sees one it refuses to load the whole zone and keeps what it has in RAM. This may go unnoticed for months until the server is […]

]]> 3755a97fafbd252578cbba0d041f2038 David Chappell wrote a new post, Draco's Policies were Draconian, on the site Eclectic http://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=3 Thu, 14 Jan 2016 18:35:47 -0500 Have you every wondered why we call a harsh policy “draconian”? This is one of those words which comes from the name of a famous person.

Draco or Dracon was a Athenian politician. He was one of those who worked […]

]]> b63f2ef181483d3dc953bb89a69b266c David Chappell wrote a new post, Flowroute, on the site Eclectic http://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=4 Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:12:00 -0400 I have been grieving ever since Voicepulse canceled its flexrate program and been looking for a new low-price provider with good quality.

Under the flexrate program, one would send a query to Voicepulse’s […]

]]> 9b6a18ef86a26cea26949b2d36e5c27c David Chappell wrote a new post, Reducing Echo in Telephone Handsets, on the site Eclectic http://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=6 Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:19:00 -0500 A common source of echo in VoIP phone systems is the telephone handsets. Of course, non-VoIP phone systems have this source of echo too, but it often is not so evident because without the buffering the echo […]

]]> 664bdfa15339687386ff56cdfcd3116d David Chappell wrote a new post, How to be a Good VoIP Provider for Asterisk Users, on the site Eclectic http://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=7 Fri, 09 Jan 2009 22:13:00 -0500 There is more to being a good VoIP telephony provider for Asterisk users than simply offering the best balance of price and reliability. Usability is also very important. Here are some things which make for a […]

]]> cbc2c03d1790b1d761e2e53354b9440a David Chappell wrote a new post, Is open source telephony a serious option?, on the site Eclectic http://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=8 Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:56:00 -0400 I was recently asked whether anyone would every really consider replacing a tired old PBX with an open source system and whether we had any experience with Asterisk. Here is the answer I wrote, based on our […]

]]> 97ea02af37684e4a4194f0fbf1353f17 David Chappell wrote a new post, Join the DUNDi cloud, call Europe!, on the site Eclectic http://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=10 Thu, 01 May 2008 17:19:00 -0400 Do you have an Asterisk box and an underutilized T1? Or do you have a large number of DID numbers on your PBX? Why not join a DUNDi cloud and trade access to your numbers or to your local calling area for access […]

]]> 335f7ea51269430ffef222a566f2a050 David Chappell wrote a new post, My VoIP network, on the site Eclectic http://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=11 Thu, 01 May 2008 15:15:00 -0400 I run a VoIP network for my friends and family. There are phones at about 10 locations. Four of the locations have Asterisk servers.

Three of the Asterisk servers are run in a redundant configuration. SIP query […]

]]> 08f3160b1d113a2244c84d0645c410a3 David Chappell wrote a new post, Inexpensive home Asterisk server, on the site Eclectic http://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=12 Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:56:00 -0400 I have a new Asterisk server at home. It is a Contec IPC-BX/M600(PCW). This is a wall-mount PC. It is about a foot square and about two inches thick. There is no power brick. The power cord plugs directly into the […]

]]> 4eab5331b985672da10649c2133b935f David Chappell wrote a new post, Yet another VoIP blog, on the site Eclectic http://commons.trincoll.edu/eclectic/?p=13 Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:55:00 -0400 There is already no shortage of IP telephony blogs. Many of them are valuable and interesting. Many of them are written from the standpoint of a observer watching the facinating new devices and services which […]

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