Internet is becoming more and more polluted with junk-mail, people selling crap, and businesses which don't know their place on the net. They're all trying to make this wonderful place (i.e.: the net) in to hell (i.e.: real world). Internet should be viewed as a place of imagination, creativity, and most of all: fun. Internet is not some really advanced tool for searching for people to rip-off. It's about searching, and finding, things which are useful, helpful, and promote the sharing of ideas. This is what this site is striving to become.

Yey, finally mentally back from vacation (physically, was back last monday :-); will post a vacation (b)log shortly.

- Alex; Mon Feb 8 06:41:54 EST 2010
February 8th at wikipedia...

Day 1: Flying out to Hawaii. Mr0ning flight to LAX, then after 3 hours another flight to Kona.

- Alex; Sun Jan 24 05:46:50 EST 2010

Replaced my old Sony MDR-EX51LP Fontopia headphones with Sony MDR-EX56LP/BLK EX, and I must say they've made quite a few improvements in the last few years. For one, the sound seems clearer (but that could be 'cause old headphones were... a bit worn out), and another major thing is quality of the rubber thingie for the ear. The EX56LP ones are unlikely to come off accidentally---definitely tougher. (I've replaced about 3 pairs of EX51LP ones over the years, primarily 'cause I'd lose the rubber thingie).

- Alex; Fri Jan 22 04:21:23 EST 2010

Just as mysteriously, when I turned kindle on today (to copy all the books to it again), it had all the books that were there before---so it wasn't really b0rken or anything... just...glitched for some reason. Apparently it's known to lock up or crash (googled for it). Kinda weird that it would do that on me while reading a plain text file.

- Alex; Thu Jan 21 07:41:30 EST 2010

Hmm... my kindle for no particular reason just shut down. When I booted it back up, all the data was *gone*. Totally empty. Not even their boring Kindle Usage manual. Had to spend a good 15 minutes on the subway not reading anything :-(

- Alex; Wed Jan 20 20:56:04 EST 2010

Citigroup suffers $7.6 billion loss. Hmm...

Apparently there are such things as Mini and Micro USB cables. The way I found out is 'cause apparently Kindle uses the Micro, and none of my regular spare USB cables are any good... [and Amazon ships that huge 6foot cable with Kindle---which isn't exactly travel size].

Blizzard Adds Timestamps To WoW Armory. Uh, oh!!! Now everyone can stalk my characters: Profphet, Qlah, and recently added Rlah (eh, those hames aren't as unique as I thought :-/

- Alex; Tue Jan 19 07:30:10 EST 2010

First impression of Kindle: this isn't a web-browsing device, though it has a web-browser with supposedly free internet access. It doesn't have a mouse, which is a major hurdle when "web-browsing". Also half the sites don't work right. If you just wanna lookup something on wikipedia (or access gmail?) then it works "ok" (not great, but, eh, it's free). As a book reading device, it's great. The new device supports PDF docs---without the need for "conversion" (the amazon reviewers are wrong, you just drop the PDF (or text) document into the device via USB, and you access it as a book... no programs on your computer).

- Alex; Fri Jan 15 07:14:55 EST 2010

Yey, got a Kindle :-)

- Alex; Wed Jan 13 20:48:45 EST 2010

Microsoft pulls Office from own online store. Wow!

Neat thing: Critterding.

- Alex; Tue Jan 12 07:11:06 EST 2010

Japan's capsule hotels now coffin-sized homes. Not sure why the media is spinning this in a negative light (ie: coffin?); these little rooms look great! I wish there was something like this in places in Manhattan---where you can just spend a night for $30.

- Alex; Mon Jan 11 07:05:15 EST 2010

Job growth returns -- only to be gone again. Hmm...

- Alex; Fri Jan 8 07:09:56 EST 2010

The last few weeks were a zombie-state of reading-wowing-wr0king-reading-wr0king-wowing.

Finished reading Writing for Computer Science by Justin Zobel. This book is great, and I highly recommend it to anyone doing any sort of research. It is the type of book I wish I read five years ago---now if only I could figure out how to follow its advice...

Will be upgrading my dev box this week; adding few 1.5T drives (the old 320gig drives are getting a bit cluttered).

- Alex; Thu Jan 7 07:55:21 EST 2010

Happy New Year Everyone!

This year certainly had its share of ups and downs, hopefully next one will turn out quite a bit better!

- Alex; Thu Dec 31 19:37:45 EST 2009

Writing for Computer Science by Justin Zobel, is turning out to be quite an inspirational writing guide---almost makes me want to go out (or stay in) and write a paper! Definitely recommend this for anyone who wants to write stuff dealing with CS.

- Alex; Mon Dec 21 07:07:17 EST 2009

After being pissed off for about a week, I think I'm getting back on track with the phd thing. Need to rewrite my paper. Ordered Writing for Computer Science by Justin Zobel. Hopefully that has some helpful tips.

In other news, actually started to read email... something I barely done in the last few months. The semester is coming to an end, and need to make sure I got everything.

And in still other news... writing this update! :-/

Was pondering last night whether it makes sense to have gravity without time. For example, the LHC might discover these gravity particles---but would those particles not work without time, or would they also carry time? [more of those gravity particles means time goes slower?---like in the center of a black hole---so does it mean that time would zip by quicker if it weren't for these gravity particles?]

- Alex; Tue Dec 15 07:08:13 EST 2009

Apparently my 2nd exam won't happen this week.

- Alex; Tue Dec 8 07:00:45 EST 2009

Eh, Eh, Eh... Symantec's latest update apparently detects nmap as a ``trojan horse'' :-/

Google Launches Public DNS Resolver. ``Configure your network settings to use the IP addresses 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as your DNS servers.'' That's it. Neat!!!

- Alex; Fri Dec 4 07:56:18 EST 2009

Setup normal Ubuntu Desktop on my netbook. That "Ubuntu Netbook Remix" (UNR) is a piece of crap. There's no intuitive way to... rearrange the icons that you see; basic things like: ``I want that program to be in this menu.'' are frustratingly unintuitive to do. Besides, regular Ubuntu desktop just "works" too---so why bother with UNR?

Was amazed by the clearest description of Hamming codes in Feynman Lectures on Computation. Highly recommend this book.

Is NASA still the best use of US tax dollars? Hmm... So an AIG bailout is a better use of tax dollars? What's the NASA budget for the last...amm...say 50 years? What's the *single* bailout of AIG at? Are they seriously suggesting that as a society, we have ``better things to do'' besides do-the-things-NASA-does (attempt to get us off this rock, one step at a time).

- Alex; Tue Dec 1 07:58:54 EST 2009

Figured out how to do a bios reset (or at least get into bios) on ASUS 1008HA. Apparently there are some bios settings that skip POST completely and start booting. These settings became "default" since last bios upgrade (I didn't even notice that). Problem is that if you screw up your OS (like... screwing up your MBR), the laptop will refuse to boot [unrecognized file system], and won't let you choose a different boot device since there's no POST, and it jumps directly into booting that bad device. Haven't been able to find a solution on the internets, I started looking for a reset button...somewhere. Guess where I found it? It was on the side of a panel, under the VGA cable plug [only way to press it is to bend a paperclip and get in there]. In any case, not knowing what that button does... I pressed it, and it did nothing. Apparently if you boot while holding down that button, you're forcing the BIOS POST [it's kinda akward pressing the button under the laptop with a bent paperclip while pressing the power button on the front of the laptop, but, eh, it worked]. So trying out Ubuntu Netbook remix 9.10, and so far so good. Stuff seems to be working as expected---even the wireless/wired network issue has been resolved; ie: everything works, if you're not sure whether to get this laptop for linux or not.

However, the new Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10 doesn't appear to have "classic desktop" mode---there's doesn't appear a way to disable the fisher-price looking desktop; which sux. I think I'll try living with it for the time being, and it gets too annoying, will go back to regular Ubuntu Desktop.

- Alex; Mon Nov 30 07:00:14 EST 2009

Wall Street set to open lower. And it's a short trading day... :-/

In other news... booked a trip to Hawaii this January :-)

- Alex; Fri Nov 27 07:51:20 EST 2009

Teh website is hopefully fixed for good this time. Apparently while resolving an issue, the tech tweaked the DNS entry---so while the IP address pointed to the correct site, the hostname pointed to some other website. Trouble with that is prolly my email went elsewhere for a bit... :-/

- Alex; Wed Nov 25 07:54:00 EST 2009