Mindful Musings

Microsoft fired an employee for a posting on his personal blog and showing a picture of a truck unloading a palet or Macintosh G5s into the Redmond Campus PrintShop loading dock. There are a couple of things amiss here. One: Be careful of what you blog and what you write, it might come back and bite you. I dont want to debate how ethical it is for Microsoft to beat down an employee taking pictures of their campus and posting them or talking about Microsoft buying G5s. Two: Microsoft if actually buying G5s for their graphics production work. What does this say about the power and the prowess of Macs in graphics based applications?

Testing trackback to FeedDemon post to WordPress hack. BTW feeddemon also has posting hacks directly to MT and LJ
Check out Weblog Tools Collection for the hack

I use a program FeedDemon RC2 which is an RSS Aggregator and lets me browse through and read hundreds of blogs without having to download all the graphics and the overhead associated with blogsites. I read about a feature request on the WordPress Support sites asking for a way to post a news article directly from FeedDemon into WordPress and I put a hack together for it. The last few posts you see on here are from that hack. It makes adding entries to my blog a breeze and I can get a lot of information in there with VERY little effort. I do believe that this makes for poor content as I am simply recycling and not creating anything interesting of my own. It still has its own merits and this feature will be used often by me to gather relevant information.
On another note, Wal Mart opened its doors here in Toledo yesterday. The opening day was dismal with little to no good deals and the store looked very much like Kmart in my opinion. My parents had wanted to know whether it was a Super Wal Mart or not, and I am sad to report that the one on Central Avenue is NOT a Super WalMart.

There’s been more talk about comment spammers around the net lately. And there’s especially been some traffic around Jay Allen’s MT-Blacklist plugin for MovableType. We’re going to be doing some similar things for WordPress.
I’ve commented in a few discussions about an idea that I have that would be more of a deterrent (hopefully) than a blocking mechanism. It would work by encoding URLs in submitted comments, randomly replacing characters with their numeric entity equivalents. This change is invisible to browsers, but the idea is that Google would index the URL differently every time it was posted in a blog’s comments. Which would bust the ranking for that link. The downside is that it would also bust Google ranking for non-spammers. I plan to run some experiments later to verify whether Google automaticly decodes the entities before indexing links.
If this technique does bust the ranking, we might still be able to use it without punishing regular users too much. We could use a scoring technique to attempt to decide whether a comment is spam or not. Ones that we can decide are definitely spam get blocked completely. Ones that definitely are not spam go through unchanged. Comments that score in a gray area would be encoded, but the admin would be able to retroactively whitelist them.
Thoughts?

...excerpt from: http://dougal.gunters.org/index.php?p=294&c=1

– (story) – So says the owner. “Ragtime Rick’s on Glendale Ave. will close at the end of the business day on Monday %5BNov 3%5D. Owner Rick Grafing says he’s lost about 40 percent of his business due to the smoking ban, and he can no longer afford to do business in Toledo. Grafing says he’s hoping to relocate his business to Maumee or someplace outside the Toledo city limits.” How many lesser-known establishments will tank that we won’t hear about? Toledo, Ohio, a small business-friendly environment. Makes me think of the Toledo sign design shot down earlier this year called: ToledOH!. Own a bar in Toledo? DOH! Should have kept that design. It’s more appropriate. Homer Simpson, Toledo City Council, I can see the resemblence. Maybe Rick will move to The Town Center at Levis Commons or The Shops at Gateway Crossings. – (29-Oct-2003 6:34 P.M.)
...excerpt from: http://www.toledotalk.com/cgi-bin/comments.pl/3/362

Your information architecture is as smooth, clear, and inviting as a lake. Your design rocks. Your code works. But what keeps readers coming back is compelling writing that’s continually fresh and new. Updating daily content can challenge the most dedicated scribe or site owner. Mark Bernstein’s ten tips will help you keep the good words (and readers) coming.
...excerpt from: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/writeliving/

danigiri writes “Finally Varadarajan has put some hard facts on the speed of the VT ‘Big Mac’ G5 cluster. Undoubtedly after some weeks of tuning and …
...excerpt from: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/30/1939236

EvilXenu writes “What two things go better together than Star Wars and sex? Be sure to don your peril-sensitive glass before visiting. Graphical descriptions …
...excerpt from: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/16/2041210

I am sick and tired :evil::shock: of getting behind old vans and broken down trucks that spew out copious amounts of carbon monoxide as they meander along lethargically in rush hour traffic! I remember my younger days in Calcutta, India (before the auto-emissions regulations) when I used to feel like I could not breathe (and got noticeably darker) when a public bus drove by my car. All of that has changed. India has very strong emission regulations now. I believe and strongly advocate mandatory emission certification of automobiles before a registration can be renewed. Thoughts?

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Found some really interesting articles at A List Apart dot com about dynamic stylsheet changes using a simple javascript and storing the information as cookies. I was really itching to try it out with all the talk at WordPress Forums about retro stylesheets for WordPress and my 3 column stylesheets. So here are the results. On the top right hand side of the menu you will see the themes I have installed for my version of WordPress with a few modifications to suit my second menu column. Feel free to play around and see which one you like best. If you would like to impliment this on your site ( no matter which CMS you use, this will work for you ) simply visit the List Apart link above and download the javascript and follow the instructions. If you are confused, feel free to email me and I will try to help.
PS: once you choose a templte/style, a cookie is set on your computer which remembers your choice for the next time The themes break in Mozilla (for now) and do not degrade well, but thats not the point of this exercise

When you leave the house in the morning and see a cloud like this on your way to work – it’s probably not going to be a good day.
PS: I did not take the picture, it was from an email forwarded to me. Yes Jason, I know.

I have re-written a couple of the templates for WordPress. The first is the three column floating one which you see here and can download the template at otaku42’s Blog The other template is a rework of the old b2 theme which so many people seemed to be missing a lot. You can find that as a rework of the Mindful Musings blog, getting the same information from the server, but spitting it out differently. This should be available for download soon through otaku42’s blog.
Happy Blogging!

I got really tired of looking through a hundred websites to find a good tutorial for regular expressions. I found really interesting bits of information on many sites and decided to put it all together in one place along with some nice links to other sites with good reference and reading material. Some of the work on this website is my own, some of it is a replica of information found elsewhere (with their origin very well documented and their author credited). Here is the link to my Regular Expressions Tutorial and Reference for PHP

MIT is going to unveil its new music sharing product using Cable TV and laws that govern broadcast of library based music. This research project is funded by Micro$oft and can be introduced into any cable network at a cost of about $10,000. Read more in this NY Times article (dont need to log in) The idea behind all of this, which Im sure is about to be challenged in court, is the reduced amount of restrictions imposed by the music industry on analog medi distributions such as cable TV and broadcast radio (non-internet). I will be very interested to see what the music industrys’ lawyers think of all of this and how widely this is accepted in the industry. I love the fact that these kids (that actually developed this) will be shot to fame because of all of this!

I really like this picture of Jennifer, so here it is for my parents.

I read this really interesting article from Critical Section via Salad with Steve who is a Google Employee. I find that this article is very true. I find it very hard to get any bit of programming done in less than a three hour window and tend to shy away and put it off if I cannot find the time. I also shut off my email client when I am coding and have some music playing. Interestingly enough, when I was in high school, my parents used to tell me that music would break my concentration and I would have to spend more time at the same task. I definitely think this article is a good look-see.

I HAVE to talk about this, this is funny as all heck. Remember the big Hoopla from Apple and Steve Jobs about Itunes for Windows? Well, Micro$oft’s MacTopia Website is heavily promoting Apple’s Panther… Who would have thought…..??

This is awesome! Apple users finally showing some support in real life. If you were fortunate enough to have an Apple store close to you (which I dont and I wish I had the chance, I might have to take a trip to the closest store sometime, sounds awesome!) you would have had to stand in line to buy this next “reference release” of Mac OS X. I wish I could afford it, let alone live close to an Apple store! Here is the link at MacMinute showing pictures from Apple stores around the world and the lines of people waiting to buy Apple Gear and software. I read about the new Apple Gear at Confessions of a G33k I wish I had an Apple dog tag! I have to be honest. Ever since I inherited my Blue and White G3 (with a Meg of cache!!) I have had some strange fits of Apple ownership pride. I love the product, I equally adore the product line and their business model (even though I do have some gripes against their proprietary nature, topic for another day) and have to say that along with my Linux Server and my two XP workstations, my G3 makes my computer den complete! hehe

If you are a regular visitor, you will notice that the look and feel of the site has changed a lot. I have upgraded my CMS from b2 to WordPress 0.72 Gold which is a new version of b2. This new tool has a lot of cool features and will add a lot to my site, including:

Better speed and faster html action
Better CSS design and code which follows standards
Better comment structure and control over the blog
BlogRoll like links, no need for blogrolls
Most of the code I wrote for Wordpress is usable in my own blog, wonder of wonders!

I have trimmed down some of the other items and will add the b2/wordpress photohack soon. This is enough for today, I need ot go back to coding in openGL. I might play around with some of my own php code to get some more features and hacks worked in.

I am sitting here at the case center booooo:roll:oooreed out of my mind. While I sit here and wait for people to even know I am here, I am working on the deliverables for Dr Makki. I did forget to get a network cable for my laptop and the Engineering wireless does not reach all the way back here. So I am stuck without the internet and no way to look around. I am writing this from one of the lab machines, which BTW suck ass….still. I did find out that Jason (of Villalta fame) has finished some work on his webpage and here is the link for all of you that know him and/or would like to bookmark his site. Rubix is the name that he has chosen. This post sounds weird and this keyboard is making me type everything twice…i hate clacking keys! Time to run, I might get bored again and post some more!

Just woke up from a power nap. I was up till 2:30 AM this morning finishing up my presentation and getting things ready. Tonight might be another one of those nights. Jennifer’s Mom has cooked some chilli which she has invited us to come and enjoy. (no cooking for me :mrgreen:) I have to get some work put into my thesis tonight. I have gotten the algorithm down pat and have to concentrate on drawing up some nice flowcharts. Here is the list of things I should turn in to him tomorrow.

Investigate the use of Simple PKI or sPKI in my deisgn

Flow chart of deisgn, as detailed as Visio lets me (which could get HUGE!)

Think about the interface and detailed work on the interface design

Analyze possible timeout issues and traps for timeouts

Meet Dr Makki at 3:00 tomorrow

Tall order. I am thinking of concetrating on a few of those topics and getting those done before biting off more than I can chew. Instead of drawing all of this on visio and spending many hours on that, I might just get them done by hand and then if approved, run them on Visio. Let us see…Simple PKI is a nice area to look at first, followed by some sketches on interface design and timeout analysis. That should do me….OH WAIT!! thats all of them!

8-)Banzai!!:mad: I have finally finished working on my presentation for tomorrow. As the title of this post speaks volumes, it is based on Network Processors or NPs and their insides.:wink: If anyone is interested (or if I forget to save this to a disk or something and need to download it at school) here is the link to my PowerPoint Presentation

If you havent read this already, MSN has an interesting article on India and the Tech Outsourcing revolution. There is a lot of money to be had there, gives me some nice ideas.

:shock::lol::cool:Microsoft Windows XP 64 bit site. The only issue I see here is that this OS is optimised for the EPIC architecture, thus not for the AMD 64, which blows chunks, but im sure that support with show up as well.

I still need a copy of MacOS 10.2 for my Blue and White G3. Anyone own one that they want to get rid of or anyone know of anyone who might want to get rid of an extra copy? Send them my way.

:mrgreen:I have really thoroughly enjoyed fall break. I spent most of the last few days coding, cooking, playing with Luckey and spending some quality time with Jennifer. I have to get some work done today to compensate for my laziness. I still have a graphics project to code, I have to develop a presentation on architecture of network processors and I have to do some work on my thesis (get a flowchart together for my program and such). The break was well worth it and I feel a lot better now. I did end up buying the Homedics Therapist Select Shiatsu Back Massager from Meijer. It is actually quite nice. It reminds me of a chair that I had sat on a year or so ago at Sam’s Club. This little trick cost me about a hundred bucks but I have 90 days tor return it and if I find that I am not using it enough, I sure as heck WILL return it!8-O As for other news, I am getting my cable TV again today. I am just tired of having to get a movie every night we want to sit down and watch something on TV while eating dinner. It bugged me enough that I am willing to spend the extra 40 bucks and get the cable. That too is without a contract and I can cancel it and return the box anytime I feel too guilty about it.
I took a close look at the XMLRPC of b2 because Jennifer was having some problems with her blog showing up on Weblogs.com after she had updated it. I just redid the XMLClient part of the interface with BlogRolling.com preferences and it seems to be up and running now. I will keep y’all updated. Back to reading about networked processors now, more posts forthcoming. I wish I would get my G**gle A*Sen*e information soon so I can start posting them on Weblog Tools Collection.8)

I had so much trouble figuring out Regular Expressions for PHP that I decided to put all of the stuff I foud in one place. I have attributed to all the authors, but if you still have a problem with the information being on this page, email me and I will take it down. Here is the link to my Regular Expressions Tutorial

I finished the beta version of Visitor Trac. You can see it at work on the top of this page. It keeps track of the last 5-6 visits of every visitor and puts you back in the same place when you come back within 7 days. I dont know how useful this is in my blog, but it is very useful for large sites with bulletin boards or with deep information menus which need to be accessed frequently. This script is very customizeable and still has a few bugs and drawbacks which I will work through as and when the need arises. I like the idea and we will see how it catches on.:lol: Check out Weblog Tools Collection to find the code and get a more detailed explanation.

Imagine turning on your television any time of day or night and watching a heated debate about the impact of science on your life-from stem-cell research and cloning to the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in your food; from the biology of violence to the chemistry of addiction; from the puzzles of depression to the latest breakthroughs on aging; from the evolution of morality to the complexities of consciousness; from the exploration of space to the discovery of life beyond Earth….
Imagine a network that delivered the latest lecture by Stephen Hawking on the nature of time or by Jane Goodall on the chimpanzees of Gombe. Or archived footage of the late Richard Feynman mesmerizing an audience with his Nobel-wattage intellect and irreverent humor. Perhaps you would find yourself in the midst of a marathon reprise of landmark television series like Carl Sagan’s Cosmos or Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man, rescued from retirement. Maybe a showing of Life Story, the dramatization of James Watson and Francis Crick’s discovery of the double helix of DNA-or a Nova marathon.

This is a quote from the Cable Science Network
I dont have cable at home and I really miss the Airplane Channel and the science based channels. If you really want to know how much of a geek I am, check this out. If this TV station ever becomes a reality, even anytime soon, I will get myself the 55” High Definition Wide Screen Television that I have been wanting to get with a nice Yamaha 600W YHT-440 Surround Sound System and I will start paying for cable. There is no better night for me (entertainment wise) than to sit in front of a high-definition, widescreen TV, watching Richard Feynman explain the mechanisms of Maxwell’s Equations. This TV station/Cable station would just simply, ROCK!