Do Something

PHP best practices

2008-07-09T20:16:00.002-05:00

I'm currently working for a company that uses the LAMP application stack. They have only had one full time programmer since they started, and he's a cowboy. They don't use much of a database abstraction layer, they mix their display code with their business logic, they don't do any testing, and even worse than not using source control at all, they sometimes use source control.

I'm starting a new project that will be fairly large and independent from the rest of the site, so I'd like to introduce some better development practices. I don't know much about php frameworks and stuff, so if you have any suggestions for what I should use please post them in the comments. The only major requirement is that it can be used along side the existing code. So what do you suggest?

JS equivalence operators: "Good enough for government work"

2008-06-30T16:10:00.001-05:00

I was having some strange behavior with a javascript app I wrote. It's an image thumbnailing interface that allowed the user to zoom and drag an image around. When it loads, the image is scaled to be either as tall or as wide as the thumbnail size, and the other dimension is larger. The user can zoom in and out, but they can't zoom it smaller than it starts so no whitespace can appear. When a user zoomed in and then all the way out, the image would pop out of the frame a little bit and whitespace would appear at the bottom (this was an image that was as tall as the thumbnail size, I imagine the whitespace would be on the right if the image were as wide as the thumbnail size and taller). After tracing through the javascript for a while I realized the problem; javascript considers ('' == 0) to be True.

I have a function that repositions the image so when you zoom in/out it stays centered on the same point. I wanted to be able to call it to reposition for a move that only had a horizontal vector, so I made it check to make sure there was a value for each of the x and y coordinates before it tried moving the image on that vector. I passed in an empty string when I didn't want to make a move on that vector. The problem came in to play when I zoomed out to the max and the image's position on the short dimension became 0. I want to move the image to 0 on that vector, but my test for no value was catching the 0 and calling it "nothing", just like ''.

Once I tracked this down, the solution was simple. Just use the "really equal, I mean it for reals" operator; a.k.a. "===".

if (left != '' || left === 0) { do stuff; }

A more appropriate way to do this might be to have a real value like "nochange" mark when I don't want to do anything with that vector, but I did this because I didn't want to find all the places where I used '' and change them.

"bug" with onclick handlers in IE

2008-06-25T15:07:00.004-05:00

I had an issue today with Internet Explorer. An object with an onClick handler worked fine in Firefox and Safari, but in IE the handler only fired every other click. In the course of debugging I discovered that if I clicked slowly, it worked on every click. I realized that this was because IE must be registering an onDblClick event instead of two onClick events. A little testing confirmed this. I searched to see if someone else had the same problem, and found this page. User jamescover had the same issue and found a solution: use the onMouseUp event to handle clicks instead of onClick. He also directed the focus in the onMouseDown event, but I found that part to be unnecessary in my application. A demo of his solution can be found here. I'll reproduce the code in this post in case that page ever gets taken down:


<script type="text/javascript">
<!--

var x = 0;
function addX(){
document['oFrm']['num'].value = x;
x++;
}

var y = 0;
function addY(){
document['oFrm2']['num2'].value = y;
y++;
}

//-->
</script>
This one invokes the function <b>onclick</b>
<form name="oFrm">
<input type="text" name="num" size="5" />
<input type="button" value="add" onclick="addX();" />
</form>
This one focuses the text field <b>onmousedown</b>, then invokes the function <b>onmouseup</b>
<form name="oFrm2">
<input type="text" name="num2" size="5" />
<input type="button" value="add" onmousedown="this.focus();" onmouseup="addY();" />
</form>

A Better CAPTCHA

2008-05-14T15:15:00.006-05:00

I don't yet have any need to implement CAPTCHA myself, but if I did, it wouldn't be your standard distorted and scribbled on text. It would be one of these:

Microsoft Asirra

With Asirra, to identify yourself as a human you have to identify a series of pictures as cats (excluding the dogs). It seems like a sound approach, but on the face it looks so nonsensical that I feel compelled to use it. Picture this internet argument: "Well you plainly have no idea what you're talking about on this issue, so I won't keep wasting my valuable time trying to fight with your stupidity! As soon as I click on these cats, you'll never hear from me again!"

reCAPTCHA

This one is more serious, and has a purpose too. Instead of displaying random obscured characters, it displays a real scanned image of two words from an old book. One of these words has been identified and the other has not. The user types both words, the computer verifies the user's humanity with the known word, and records what the human said the unknown word was. Through this process the un-digitized book becomes completely digitized. They're turning CAPTCHA tests, a "lesser evil" annoyance, into something that's actually good.

Why so many microsoft shops?

2008-05-13T08:12:00.003-05:00

While looking for a job, I've been surprised by the number of places developing on a Microsoft platform. I didn't know that it was so common, at least in Chicago. If you're using a Microsoft OS, service, or language and it works for you then great, but aren't there open source alternatives that are just as good and not as expensive? Especially MS SQL server; whenever I see that I can't help but wonder why they aren't using MySQL or Postgresql. Does anyone reading this work in the Microsoft world at work? What keeps your company there?

Rot13 Utility

2008-01-11T15:31:00.000-06:00

Rot13 is a common method for obfuscating text, often used to randomize passwords or to hide "spoilers" from online discussions. The tool I most commonly use to translate rot13'd text is http://www.rot13.com/, and that works well for translating long sections of ciphertext back in to plaintext. However, often there is just one or a few words to be translated from plaintext to ciphertext, and I find the site to be too much overhead for the task.

That's why I made a simple php script on my website to do my rot13 translations from now on. The key difference between mine and rot13.com is that the form on mine uses the GET method rather than POST. This allows me to make a firefox bookmark to translate text directly from the url bar. To do this, bookmark this url: http://timsaylor.com/tools/rot13.php?plaintext=%s. Then in the bookmark's properties add a value to the keyword field. My keyword is "rot", so now whenever I type "rot [text]" into my url bar, it sends that to my script and opens a page with the ciphertext.

It's just a simple utility, and writing this blog post about it took longer than actually making the script itself. I just had to rot13 something today, though, and I remembered wishing that I could do it more simply. A quick search turned up this rot13 php function, which meant all the hard work was done. I just wrapped that up in an html form and put it online. The source is here.

Internet Famous

2007-11-01T23:45:00.000-05:00

Today I was informed that a project that Dan and I collaborated on recently received a bit of attention on the internets. Our "In Case of Revolution Break Glass" box, pictured below.

Dan had the idea, I did the woodwork, and Dan painted and lettered. One major reason that Dan wanted to make this was so he could post it on a "Show off stuff you've made" thread on Something Awful. From there it was cross posted to Digg (edit: and made the #1 spot apparently!), then on to this blog, which was Reddited, and then on to College Humor today. There were many more too, 3,580 hits on Google. The only credit we got was someone in the digg comments saying "This is from Something Awful, a goon did it" (half true), but that's to be expected. I'm still pleased. And next time it'll say "timsaylor.com" across the bottom. :-)

Maker Faire: Austin '07

2007-10-30T02:19:00.000-05:00

I got back from the Maker Faire last weekend, and it was amazing. Many of the projects I had seen online like the Singing Tesla Coil, the RepRap, Cyclecide and their freak bikes, all the kits from the Maker Store and Adafruit Industries, and some projects from Instructables were there to be played with in meatspace. The highlights for me were riding a double decker bicycle, seeing the 10 foot tall trebuchet launch a watermelon, Cyclecide's bicycle powered ferris/hamster wheel, the CNC woodworking tools, learning how to spin wool into yarn, 5 minute t-shirts with Bre Pettis, and actually playing the singing tesla coils through a keyboard. Unfortunately I'm an idiot and brought my camera to the faire, but left the battery safely plugged into the wall in Chicago. Fortunately, plenty of other people documented the event for me. Enjoy the pictures, and start saving up for San Mateo in May!

Maker Faire Videos

2007-09-20T11:17:00.000-05:00

I've been planning to go to the Maker Faire in Austin, Texas this October, and I'm surprised none of you are interested in going too. If you're not familiar with the kind of stuff that'll be there, here's some videos showing the cool stuff at the first two faires.

http://revision3.com/systm/makerfaire
http://revision3.com/systm/maker07

Check out information about this years faire at http://www.makerfaire.com.

Advanced but still Primitive

2007-09-05T19:03:00.000-05:00

This story about evolutionary hardware design was indeed, as the URL indicates, a damn interesting read. The thing that struck me the most was that the design the evolutionary algorithm came up with didn't work on other chips of the same type, just on the chip on which it evolved. The minute differences between different chips of the same type are negligible if their use is limited to things we currently understand, but if the only constraint is the laws of physics then the solutions that evolve are so complex and out of the ordinary that, were we to understand them, our advanced tools would probably seem like sticks and rocks.

Google Gadgets vs Facebook Applications

2007-08-17T15:28:00.000-05:00

Just the other day at work I was tasked with exploring various widget api's to see if there's potential in integrating our telephony product with these various web 2.0 sites. I've spent the last few days looking over the basics of the iGoogle and Facebook api's, and there was a stark difference.

I started with iGoogle. I googled for "iGoogle api" and the first hit was this link to the Google Gadgets api documentation. Right there on the front page it says "Write a gadget". I click Developer Guide, then "Hello, World", and there's some gadget code right in front of me. One search and two clicks is all it took to get a basic idea of how Google Gadgets work. Further reading of that page, and the next step in the documentation, "Writing Your Own Gadgets", gave me all the information I needed to know. Total time: about an hour.

Next was Facebook. Googling leads me to the Facebook developers portal. "Getting started" looks like a good place to start. All it tells me is to install the Facebook developer application. I did that, and tried to start a new application, but it asked me for things that I don't know anything about. So, back to the documentation. Hmm, nothing else on this page. I'll click "Documentation" up top. I read around here for a while, and there was a lot of specific information but not general type stuff like I'm looking for. Down at the bottom I eventually see a link called Anatomy of a Facebook Application. This has got to be what I'm looking for. Nope! It describes all the ways a user interacts with your application, but no anatomy at all. I'm getting frustrated at this point; I've read all kinds of details about the Facebook api and what the application looks like to the user, but still nothing about how I go about writing one. (Notice, I don't think they've even told me it's written in php yet!) Finally, I see Guide to Creating an Application. After hours of looking, I finally find what I want. The guide is pretty good, but the example application doesn't work. I can't look at the finished product while I read what's going on under the hood. Total time: A day or so, and still counting.

It's pretty clear to me that iGoogle has people behind it who know what they're doing and Facebook needs to get their act together. Their api has been out for several months, they need to get some good documentation written and better organized so developers can more easily figure out how Facebook applications work. There's no excuse for it really, these applications that confused people aren't writing could be adding considerable value to Facebook. For now though, I'm ignoring the silly walled garden and sticking to iGoogle.

Steampunk Video on WSJ.com

2007-08-09T15:01:00.001-05:00

The Wall Street Journal currently has a video about the steampunk artist "datamancer" on their front page. See it here. I love the computer styled like a typewriter they show in the second picture.

The Debate on Public Services

2007-07-23T19:07:00.001-05:00

The fire has died down a bit, so it's time to stoke the flames with another political blog post! My response to kungfooguru can be found on my non-tech blog here.

BARCamp Retrospective

2007-07-11T01:01:00.000-05:00

I never had a post-BarCamp update, and I don't really intend to do much of one now, but I do want to highlight a few things in case you didn't see them elsewhere and for myself in the future.

BarCamp was lots of fun. There were quite a few good talks. There was also disappointingly too little coding. I will definitely do it again next year, and I'll prepare something more substantial than the non-talk I did this year on old technology. My non-talk proved very popular, lots of people were standing around as I demonstrated my ballista, and lots of people got the opportunity to play with it. I also made it in to all the videos I've seen from the event. Here they are:

BusinessPOV's documentarian approach to covering the event.

Some random guy's youtube video of SpecialKevin firing the ballista.

The best idea ever.

New Type of Engine

2007-06-28T11:33:00.000-05:00

I thought I'd at least heard of pretty much every type of engine there is, but this one was new to me. It's probably what the infamous "air car" uses. I like it, it seems pretty simple, and it could run just as well on steam. Check it out here. He has diagrams of other types of engines that are also very interesting, you can see them here.

You know, the engines are the title discipline in engineering, maybe I should do a talk on the various types of engines? I imagine I wouldn't have much to say that isn't on these pages, but I'd still do it if there's interest.

Making Charcoal

2007-06-20T21:20:00.000-05:00

A long time ago I read an article that peripherally mentioned making charcoal at home. I couldn't do whatever it was that the article was really about (probably forging swords or casting rocket nozzles from aluminum or something), but I could make charcoal. However, I never actually did anything on this since I live in Chicago and have no yard where I can burn things for hours on end.

Then last month I heard something about an episode of "Dirty Jobs" where he worked in a charcoal factory, and the process was described as basically putting a sealed container of wood in a fire so that it partially burns, but not completely. I was already planning a camping trip soon, so I decided to give it a shot there.

When I got there, I found a log and sawed off some 1 inch rounds, then chopped it into pieces a little smaller than my palm. I put about two gallons of this in a 5 gallon metal bucket. Then I turned it upside down so it was more or less sealed with the earth and started a fire around the outside. I had trouble getting a decent fire going and the fire pit was probably too small to allow the size I would need, but I set it going nonetheless and left it to burn for about 6 hours. When I returned, I pushed the fire aside and lifted the bucket to find ... warm wood. The fire wasn't nearly sufficient to char it all. I found a few pieces that were charcoal, but this was definitely a failure.

So I tried to figure out where I went wrong. The careful reader might notice that earlier I said I read "something" that mentioned making charcoal, then I heard "something" about a show that mentioned making charcoal. Nowhere did I say I read instructions on how to make charcoal. So step 1 for next time, read instructions. I found a couple good articles on the process. The first describes the science of charcoal pretty well, and the second describes the rig much better with bigger pictures. The second also has an interesting feedback loop mechanism where the wood is heated by burning the hydrogen, oxygen, vaporized alcohol and tar that are driven off in the heating process, ensuring an almost perfect heating duration every time. These rigs look a little more complicated than I'm able to do at the moment, but there will definitely be a charcoal round 2 at some point in the future.

Using Screen for Unreliable Connections

2007-06-08T15:50:00.000-05:00

The other day I was working in a coffee shop and their internet connection went down a couple times. Unfortunately, I was ssh'ed into another box where my work was. Fortunately, I was using screen. I figured my session would disconnect and be sitting there ready for me to reconnect when the link came back up. Sure enough, it was. Saved me a lot of hassle reopening my files and saving more frequently. Here's the article that describes how to reconnect to a lost screen session after your ssh session times out (not that it's that difficult, but I'm sure I'll forget and have to reference this).

The Beverly Clock

2007-05-14T15:15:00.000-05:00

The beverly clock has an ingenious power source. It has a sealed container of air that expands and contracts with temperature differences throughout the day. I'm envisioning a sealed plastic box with a hole cut in the top, and a flexible material over the hole (like a balloon). This material would be connected to a toothed bar interlocking with a gear, connected to a pulley over which the weight and chain that normally run these clocks hangs. The toothed bar only grips the gear in one direction, and when it does it turns the gear/pulley and winds the chain. When the temperature and therefore the pressure of the air in the box fluctuates, it moves the toothed bar up and down, winding the chain. This means that the natural behavior of the environment winds this clock.

It would be difficult to get much productive power out of this setup, but it's a novel approach to the problem and might be worth keeping in mind.

Ballista Trigger

2007-05-08T15:35:00.000-05:00

A month or two ago I was reading a book on Greek and Roman engineering and was inspired to make a ballista. It was pretty simple and worked reasonably well for the nonexistent amount of planning that went in to it. Pictures can be seen here. The only engineering hurdles it didn't accomplish were adequately maintaining and adjusting tension in the springs, and a trigger mechanism to hold the string until it's ready to fire.

I just finished a design for a trigger that uses only parts that were available in ancient times (maybe not quite, but if this were the size of real ones it could be).

The only thing that worries me is the placement of the rod in the slider. Since the position in which it holds the most tension is where the rod tries to slide forward, I'm afraid it will be easier for it to slip slightly out of position without having to move the slider down. Regardless, this will just be minor slippage so it shouldn't be a problem. If it works well I might make two of these, one from wood for the actual weapon, and a second from plastic for demonstrating how it operates.

Speaking of ballistae, does the maker faire catapult competition sound awesome to anyone else? I would have gone just for this had they made it known with more time before the event, but alas they didn't. Is anyone interested in doing something similar in Chicago? I bet there's enough nerds in Chicago interested in making weird stuff to have a decent competition.

Student Run Companies

2007-05-04T23:28:00.000-05:00

The other day I saw this device linked from digg. It's not really that special, just a machine for climbing rope really fast. It's certainly a nice piece of engineering, and it'll be useful in certain professions, but the thing that really gets me about the article is this:

The students founded a company, Atlas Devices, based in Cambridge, MA, to commercialize the device, which is about the size of a power drill.

Too many times I've seen this same story. Students from MIT invent some cool device and start a company selling it. Why is it so easy for them to start companies like that all the time? Isn't it hard to develop an idea into a marketable product? Is MIT doing anything else but forming groups to develop products? Most importantly, why haven't they given me a call yet? ;)

Materials: The Most Important Engineering?

2007-05-02T00:24:00.001-05:00

I'm watching "Ancient Discoveries: Machines of the East" on Discovery and as usual, there's some amazing things those ancient inventors came up with. I just saw a device that pours a fixed amount of water at a fixed interval. It used a siphon and a float based valve like that in a modern toilet. The show said this showed an advanced knowledge of differential pressures, which is used today to make jet engines. Was the only thing stopping them from making jets a lack of the materials that could withstand those forces?

There's seems to be a first key invention that starts a field of science/engineering, like the discovery of the wheel to mechanics, electricity to electronics, etc. But beyond that, could it all be a matter of making the "things" of your discipline out of lighter, stronger, or other interesting materials?

This idea is just off the cuff, I'd like to hear some comments either way.

Proxying web.py through apache

2007-04-29T14:39:00.000-05:00

I've been wanting to try web.py for a while. It seems like it's easier to learn than Django for making python web applications. I made the hello world app quickly and simply, and decided I'd use it for a project I'm working on.

That's when it turned south. I have to use php for another project I'm doing, and I use cgi-irc (in perl through CGI) on that server, so I didn't want to re-setup all that stuff on lighttpd (the recommended method for running web.py). I tried running it through apache with cgi. After a few hours of that not working I switched to trying fastcgi on apache, also to no avail. I got fastcgi to the point where I was having an error that was common enough to be in an FAQ: I was getting 500 responses from apache because fastcgi/web.py wasn't starting fast enough for the flup WSGI library to realize it, so it would start them over and over until it eventually gave up. I decided I just wanted to see the thing work at this point, so I installed lighttpd and went through the setup for that. When that method didn't work I was fed up with their install instructions. I decided to try a method that John Quigley recommended. He said I should just run it with the internal http server that I've already used successfully and proxy the requests through apache to web.py. This might not achieve the goal of making the server large scale production ready, but I don't really have to worry about that so much at this point. It does achieve my more important goal of making my php, cgi, and web.py applications all available through a single url and port, so I gave it a shot.

I looked up apache proxying and found it was done through mod_proxy, and each protocol you want to proxy has it's own module as well. So I installed mod_proxy and mod_proxy_http and added the following line to my apache2.conf file:

ProxyPass /lifelog http://192.168.1.20:8888

192.168.1.20 being the IP address of the server in question. It would be better to get it resolving localhost so this line can be used on other servers, but I didn't want to bother with it yet. I also had to change the proxy permission rules in proxy.conf to this:

ProxyRequests Off <Proxy *> AddDefaultCharset off Order allow,deny Allow from all </Proxy>

This allows any user online to use my ProxyPass rule. Note that I left "ProxyRequests" set to "Off". If I turned that on, I would be an open proxy that spammers and hackers could use to hide their identity during their nefarious behavior.

Now all that's left is to start up my web.py server on port 8888 as specified in apache2.conf and whenever I go to /lifelog/* through apache, it'll send the request to web.py.

Better Apt Behavior

2007-04-26T18:37:00.000-05:00

Ubuntu added a nifty feature to bash recently: when you run a command that isn't installed on your system it tells you what package you need to get it. What they need to do next is apply the same type of thing to apt. When I run "apt-get install flup" and it tells me there's no package called "flup", it should automatically run "apt-cache search flup" and recommend "Here are some packages you might have meant: ... python-flup, ..." Maybe it could even list the top 10 most likely packages and have me press 0-9 to install one of them. Either way, it's silly that I have to first search for the package so I can find out what the distro named it, then run almost the same command again to install it.

Cgi::irc and Ubuntu

2007-04-26T11:57:00.001-05:00

I don't like using Pidgin(Gaim) or Mirc for an irc client when I'm on windows, and I'd rather just not bother having a client on whatever machine I'm using in general, so I usually install cgi::irc on a server and use that. I recently reinstalled Ubuntu on my server and had to reinstall cgi::irc. After that, when I tried to connect to any server I kept getting the error:

***Access Denied: No connections allowed

I tried to find an error log somewhere on the system but there wasn't one. Eventually I grepped the source for "No connections allowed" and found it on line 715 of nph-irc.cgi. This is in the code to handle ip access restrictions. So I go to the config file and find a file called "ipaccess" which only contains a rule to allow connections from 127.0.0.1. This was the problem. I didn't care about ip restrictions, so I went to the main config file and commented out the line:

ip_access_file = ipaccess

Now I can log in to my cgi::irc no problem. I could also have added more rules to "ipaccess", but I didn't want to fiddle with it, and I'd probably end up with the same situation as I have now.

It's important to note that the default Ubuntu (7.04 Feisty Fawn) cgi::irc package comes configured like this and doesn't tell you that you have to change it in order to make it useful. Maybe this should have a configuration prompt on installation as is done with packages like Postfix.

Python User-Defined Exceptions and Error Handling in Python DbAPI 2.0

2007-04-26T01:19:00.000-05:00

I just spent some time figuring out how to handle exceptions using the pysqlite library. I couldn't find a good description of how it works online, so I'm making one.

In python, all exceptions are classes. This means they can use any of the capabilities that regular python classes have, but generally all they do is define a few instance values in the __init__ method. These values are available in the exception object (the instance of the exception class) when it is caught in a "try ... except" block.

If you're receiving a user defined exception from a foreign module and don't know how to handle it, I'd recommend first wrapping the offending code in a "try...except" like this:

try: c.execute(sql) except: logfile.write("ERROR: %s %s %s" % (sys.exc_info()[0], sys.exc_info()[1], sys.exc_info()[2]))

The function sys.exc_info() returns a tuple containing 1) the type of exception being handled, 2) the associated parameter (usually some helpful descriptor), and 3) a traceback to where the exception occurred.

This hopefully tells you two things: a description of why this happened, and more importantly for my situation, the exception type. When I ran that I got something like this:

ERROR: <class 'pysqlite2.dbapi2.OperationalError'> table something already exists <traceback object at 0xb7da3cd4>

So the exception being raised was at pysqlite2.dbapi2.OperationalError. Since the python dbapi returns sql errors through exceptions I can't just fix the code here, I have to "try ... except" it. Here's what the final code snippet looked like:

try: c.execute(sql) except pysqlite2.dbapi2.OperationalError, msg: logfile.write("ERROR: %s" % msg)

To catch the other exceptions specified in the dbapi v2.0, you'd have to include several more exception handlers. The other exception classes are in the same location as the OperationalError class.

Further reading:

Version 2.0

2007-04-26T01:14:00.000-05:00

I'm restarting this blog with a new focus. Before I would post amusing happenings and general bloggy type things, but now I've moved that to my livejournal (a much better place for that type of blog) and this will be exclusively for talking about ideas and technologies about anything, from software to ancient Greek siege weapons. I'm mostly writing these things down for my benefit, but maybe the information will be useful to someone else too.

Today in the news

2005-06-03T10:42:00.000-05:00

Net porn plan labelled 'obscene': Because, as we all know, ICANN's job is to help humanity. I think .xxx is a good idea. It'll make it clear what you're going to see if you click on a link, and it makes it easy to filter porn from a computer by just blocking .xxx links. This of course assumes that porn is forbidden (and that ban is effective) on other tld's. However, putting the issue aside, ICANN is not supposed to "[give] priority to socially positive domain name proposals" because then, someone has to decide what's socially positive and I'm sure Mr. Auerbach and I would disagree on what is socially positive.
Niger scorns 'free food' demands: What a bunch of commies! They're all mad because they don't have any food and the government won't give it to them.
The organisers of the march, the Democratic Co-ordination of Niger Civil Society (CDSN), accuse the government of not doing enough to prepare for the "hungry season" which was bound to follow a poor rainy season last year. The rainy season finished last October and it was obvious that supplies would not last through until the next harvest, they say.
I accuse the Nigerians of not doing enough to prepare their own families for the "hungry season" that was "obviously" coming.
Babies in freezer shock Austria: This doesn't come as a surprise to me, Austria's pretty close to Germany.

Graduation

2005-05-16T02:37:00.000-05:00

I've officially graduated from IIT. I don't think it's a big deal at all. I'm relieved to never have to deal with class again, but since I already have a job, and I've either had a job or acted like it for the past year, there's not much of a change (aside from having to get up earlier).

However, I am looking forward to "Woe in the Snow 2005". I leave on tuesday to go to Dan's house, then off to Boyers' in Ohio, a brief tour of Flint, MI (home of :rolleyes: Michael Moore), then Chris and Karina in MI, then off to the great white north (Toronto, ON, CA) . It's sure to be a fun trip!

Hookah

2005-05-12T00:32:00.000-05:00

I went to a hookah bar last night with Paul, Dan, and Jose. It was surprisingly cool. When I tried hookah before it seemed like a waste of time, but this time I got a little bit buzzed. Not anything like drinking, but it wasn't bad. The place was much more middle-eastern than the other place I went to before, which was basically a regular store with some kind of ethnic furniture. The place last night had pillows for seating, curtains for walls, arab looking decor, the whole works. It was pretty cool.

Brandon Bird

2005-05-09T05:14:00.000-05:00

I first heard about Brandon Bird when his coloring book appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. I bought the coloring book and it was a good laugh. Then I checked out more of his art on his website and it was really cool stuff. He seems to do a lot of wierd paintings featuring recognizable people, and they're funny and cool looking. I really like "King of the Cage" and am thinking of buying it. You can check him out here.

Regardless of the turnout, this is a bad party

2005-05-06T04:56:00.000-05:00

I don't know whether it would be funny or pathetic if I had posted this.

Time Traveler Convention

2005-05-01T20:20:00.000-05:00

(Cross posted from Slashdot)

Some folks at MIT are holding a time-travelers' convention. The idea is to make it so famous and so widely-known that even thousands of years in the future, people will still know exactly when and where this time-traveler convention went down, and will all come travel to it at some point in their illustrious time-traveling careers. For those interested in attending, it's on May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC) in the East Campus Courtyard at MIT. 42:21:36.025N, 71:05:16.332W (42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees).

Pi not as random as previously thought

2005-05-01T15:20:00.000-05:00

Some researchers at Purdue University have demonstrated that while pi does not contain a pattern, other sources of randomness are better. The article shows their experimental process, which sounds kind of like the opposite of clustering. It's pretty interesting, check it out here.

Why Geeks and Nerds Are Worth It

2005-04-29T01:41:00.000-05:00

I don't necessarily agree with all of them, but here are some good reasons that you ladies should date geeks and nerds (that means me ).

Nintendo A Capella

2005-04-29T01:39:00.000-05:00

This is one of the coolest vocal performances I've seen.

http://gprime.net/video.php/nintendothemesacappella

Job offer

2005-04-18T21:26:00.000-05:00

I just got a job offer from Bridgeport Networks as a Software Engineer making a pretty good salary. This is pretty cool. I think I just made my decision about grad school ;) (for now).

Economics test results

2005-04-13T00:48:00.000-05:00

You scored 79% Adam Smithiness!

If you did well, awesome! If you didn't do well, then you probably
ought to consider reading up on economics before you participate in the
next election. "Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt is a great
place to start.
Thanks for taking my test. Don't forget to rate it!

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 89% on Adam Smithiness

Link: The Basic Economic Knowledge Test written by hicsuget on Ok Cupid

Citizens take action against illegal immigration

2005-04-06T02:25:00.000-05:00

There's been a series of articles in the Chicago Sun-Times about the Minuteman Project, a group that has organized willing citizens to patrol the border between Arizona and Mexico looking for illegal immigrants and reporting them to the authorities.

I think this is awesome. It's much like the militias that worked with the regular army in the revolutionary war. However, the Sun-Times seems to be taking every opportunity they can to say "vigilante violence may erupt" and warn against doing things on your own. Typical nanny-statist response. These people are volunteering to defend the country. They probably aren't gung ho about doing it this way, they'd probably like to do it however is best. Therefore, the best response would not be "Don't help! You're causing problems!", instead they should say "You want to help? That's great! Can you do it this way? We'll help you if you do." Capitalize on free labor when it's there!

Google is changing the world

2005-04-05T11:08:00.000-05:00

Check out Google maps. In the upper right corner is a link that says Satellite. This simply amazes me. I know satellite imagery is nothing new, but at this level of usability it's awesome, and never before has it been searchable like a map (afaik). You can even do directions on a satellite image! This is one of the most amazing things I've seen come out of Google yet. I've been having fun for the past 15 minutes looking around Chicago from a very different perspective, and I've found things I didn't know were there. Awesome!

(When you spider this, thanks Google!)

The .gov tells us about the internet

2005-03-31T19:28:00.000-06:00

In 1998, Congress commissioned a report on the Internet. It was just delivered. Thanks, .gov!

Action

2005-03-26T01:26:00.000-06:00

I am so sick of people who talk big and never take action. Am I really unique in that I say "hey, we should do this" and then I start working on actually doing it?

0wned

2005-03-25T22:13:00.000-06:00

This guy has a fun story about how he tracked down the guys who stole his credit card number and turned them in to the police. Pretty cool read.

Digital life

2005-03-21T00:47:00.000-06:00

This is fairly old now, but some students at MSU developed a simulated world platform where virus-like program/organisms fight for survival and control of limited resources. This combined with random changes to their code creates evolution. Their platform is called Avida. I ran it for a little while and it was kind of cool, but I didn't know how to use it to it's full potential so I couldn't see how cool it really was.

My biggest problem with it is that they're calling it an instance of evolution and they're saying it could be used to develop solutions to problems we don't know how to solve yet. I disagree. From what I read it appears they have to set up rewards artificially, and these have to trigger when certain milestones are reached. That can't be done for problems we don't know how to solve because we don't know what's closer or further from the proper solution. Also, with each step being rewarded we're not really talking about evolution anymore, it's much more like intelligent design. Greyhounds didn't evolve naturally, they were bred through centuries of dog racing to be skinny and fast. These skills didn't necessarily help them survive, but they helped them win races for their owners. That's the difference here too: the scientists are providing the end goal and essentially "breeding" the viruses to reach the goal.

Despite my problems with it, I'll be very interested to see where they go with their work.

Summer Founders program

2005-03-19T00:35:00.000-06:00

I just discovered the Summer Founders program through Slashdot. I think it's a fantastic opportunity for SkyBlue Mobile to get on it's feet over the summer and possibly get some VC money or a customer interested. I think we stand a good chance of getting in since we've got a quality idea with third parties backing it's quality and we will have a good starting position with the work to be accomplished this semester. I will definitely be pushing for the continuing team to sign up for this.

Trip to New Orleans

2005-03-19T00:33:00.000-06:00

SkyBlue Mobile was the runner up in the student leapfrog category of the Wireless Innovation Contest. IIT gave us an all expense paid trip to New Orleans to attend the CTIA Wireless Conference and receive the award. While there, we made some excellent contacts with cell phone OEM's and carriers and got some valuable advice about how to proceed toward funding/profitability.

We also had a lot of fun in New Orleans while not working. The travelers were Dan, Kumar, Alex, and myself. We arrived on the morning of Saturday the 12th after driving through the night and crashed in the motel, then went to the contest dinner that night. Afterward, we hit Bourbon St. and partied and danced for a few hours.

The next day we slept into the afternoon and were going to go see the N.O. sights when we got in a car accident. This guy from Bolivia made a left from the right lane straight into our car. That blew our plans for a few hours, and by then it was too late to see much, so we ate, dropped Kumar at a dinner for his employer, got Bruce from the airport, then walked around the French Quarter with Bruce for a while. Most everything was closed except for Bourbon St. so it wasn't too exciting (except for the female impersonator who grabbed Bruce's butt :D ). We got Kumar when he was done, went back to the motel, and talked about what was going on and what we were going to do the next day.

In the morning, we got up early and went to CTIA. We talked to all the OEM's and carriers we could, as well as AOL for a content provider. The best contact we got was through Mr. Robert Potter, a trustee at IIT who was attending and wanted to introduce us to someone (I won't say who to be polite). He gave us so me good advice on how best to approach our customers. We also received the award that day. It was a nice show, though I got the impression it was more important in the industry than it turned out to be. However, the award got us in contact with Telus, a carrier in Canada, and PriceWaterhouseCooper, a company in Canada who may be interested in testing our application. At a Canadian Gov't. reception after the conference, we caught up with someone from Telus who gave us some more great advice on what we need to be able to go to carriers with a cohesive and attractive offering. That night we drove around looking for something to do and crashed the Nokia CDMA party for a little while, then went back to Bourbon St. and met lots of people from the conference (the Kyocera party was actually in a bar right there).

That's all, the next morning (Tuesday the 15th) we got up, dropped Bruce at the airport, and came back to Chicago. I thought it was an awesome trip and I would love to go back sometime.

2005-02-19T18:00:00.000-06:00

Kevin Rose of TechTV posted a guide a while back to putting a PC in a mac mini case. Here it is.

The first useful information on microsoft.com

2005-02-19T15:27:00.000-06:00

Now you too can learn leet speak!

Monkey controls robot arm

2005-02-19T01:49:00.000-06:00

I'd heard of this experiment a few months ago, but now it's getting some press. This monkey is controlling a robotic arm with his mind. That's one awesome monkey!

Avast ye scurvy dogs!

2005-01-31T14:55:00.000-06:00

My pirate name is:

Black Tom Rackham

Like anyone confronted with the harshness of robbery on the high seas, you can be pessimistic at times. You have the good fortune of having a good name, since Rackham (pronounced RACKem, not rack-ham) is one of the coolest sounding surnames for a pirate. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.

Let the Human-Animal Blending Commence!

2005-01-27T03:22:00.000-06:00

Behold, the mighty Esquilax!

My First 419 Scam

2005-01-26T04:56:00.000-06:00

FROM DR ANTHONY BENSON

NIGERIA NATIONAL PETROLEUM CO-OPORATION,

{NNPC}

FALOMO IKOYI OFFICE

PLOT 23/28

LAGOS STATE

NIGERIA



DEAR SIR,

I KNOW THIS MAIL MAY COME AS SURPRISE TO YOU,SINCE WE DO

NOT KNOW

OURSELVES OR HAVE ANY PREVIOUS CONTACT BEFORE NOW,MY

PURPOSE OF WITTING YOU

IS THIS. WE BELIEVE THAT YOU WOULD BE IN A POSITION TO HELP

US IN OUR

BID TO TRANSFER THE SUM OF TWENTY-SEVEN MILLION FIVE

HUNDRED THOUSAND

DOLLARS ($27.5M USD) INTO A FOREIGN ACCOUNT.

WE ARE MEMBERS OF THE SPECIAL COMMITTEE FOR BUDGET AND

PLANNING OF THE

MINISTRY OF PETROLEUM, THIS COMMITTEE IS PRINCIPALLY

CONCERNED WITH

CONTRACT APPRAISALS AND APPROVAL OF CONTRACTS IN ORDER OF

PRIORITIES AS

REGARDS CAPITAL PROJECT OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF

NIGERIA.

WITH OUR POSITIONS, WE HAVE SUCCESSFULLY SECURED FOR

OURSELVES THE SUM

OF TWENTY-SEVEN MILLION, FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND UNITED STATE



DOLLARS(US$27.5M).THE PRESENT GOVERNMENT IN MY COUNTRY ARE

SEEKING THE SURPORT OF

FOREIGN GOVERNMENT SO THEY HAVE GIVEN DIRECTIVE TO ALL

FEDERAL

PARASTATALS TO SETTLE ALL FOREIGN CONTRACTORS BEING OWED

FOR CONTRACT THAT THEY

HAD DONE,SO OUR PLAN IS TO INCLUDE THE NAME THAT YOU WILL

PROVIDE AS

ONE OF THE CONTRACTORS BEING OWED IN MY

CORPORATION.(NNPC)NIGERIA

NATIONAL PETROLEUM CORPERATION,WHAT WE NEED FROM YOU ALSO

IS A SAFE ACCOUNT

EVEN IF EMTY INTO WHICH THE FUNDS WILL BE TRANSFERRED SINCE

GOVERNMENT

OFFICIALS ARE NOT ALLOWED BY OUR LAWS TO OPERATE FOREIGN

ACCOUNT.

IT HAS BEEN AGREED THAT THE OWNER OF THE ACCOUNT WILL BE

COMPENSATED

WITH US$8.3 MILLION OF THE REMITTED FUNDS, WE KEEP

US$16.5MILLION WHILE

US$2.75MILLION WILL BE SET ASIDE TO OFFSET EXPENSES AND PAY

THE

NECESSARY TAXES.IT MAY INTEREST YOU TO KNOW THAT TWO YEARS

AGO A SIMILAR

TRANSACTION WAS CARRIED OUT WITH ONE MR. GEORGE BRUCE, THE

PRESIDENT OF BROGE

INTERNATIONAL TRADING CORPORATION AT NUMBER 135, EAST 57TH

STREET,

28TH FLOOR, NEW YORK 10022 WITH TELEPHONE (212)308-7788 AND

TELEX

NUMBER 6731689, AFTER THE AGREEMENT BETWEEN BOTH PARTNERS

IN WHICH HE WAS TO

TAKE 25% THE MONEY WAS DULY TRANSFERRED INTO HIS ACCOUNT

ONLY TO BE

DISAPPOINTED ON OUR ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK AS WE WERE RELIABLY

INFORMED THAT

MR. GEORGE WAS NO LONGER ON THAT ADDRESS WHILE HIS

TELEPHONE AND TELEX

NUMBERS HAVE BEEN REALLOCATED TO SOMEBODY ELSE, THAT IS HOW

WE LOST

US$19.8M TO MR GEORGE BRUCE.THIS TIME AROUND WE NEED A MORE

RELIABLE AND

TRUSTWORTHY PERSON OR A REPUTABLE COMPANY TO DO BUSINESS

WITH HENCE THIS

LETTER TO YOU, SO IF YOU CAN PROVE YOURSELF TO BE TRUSTED

AND

INTERESTED IN THIS DEAL THEN WE ARE PREPARED TO DO BUSINESS

WITH YOU. WHAT WE

WANT FROM YOU IS THE ASSURANCE THAT YOU WILL LET US HAVE

OUR SHARE WHEN

THIS AMOUNT OF US$27.5M IS TRANSFERRED INTO YOUR ACCOUNT.

IF THIS PROPOSAL SATISFIES YOU, PLEASE CONTACT ME THROUGH

E-MAIL STATED

ABOVE SO WE CAN ADVICE YOU ON THE MODALITIES OF THE

TRANSACTION. ALL

MODALITIES OF THE TRANSFER HAVE BEEN WORKED OUT AND ONCE

STARTED WILL NOT

TAKE MORE THAN 14 WORKING DAYS WITH THE ABSOLUTE SUPPORT OF

ALL

CONCERNED. THIS TRANSACTION IS 100% RISK FREE AND TOTALLY

SAFE.

PLEASE TREAT AS URGENT AND VERY CONFIDENTIAL. GOD BE WITH

YOU AS I LOOK

FORWARD TO YOUR REPLY.



BEST REGARDS.

DR ANTHONY BENSON

SEND YOUR REPLY THROUGH MY PRIVATE EMAIL

ADDRESS:{benson_anthony222@yahoo.co.uk}

Almost too good to be true

2005-01-23T23:29:00.000-06:00

This article on Slashdot says that the supreme court doesn't want to legislate morality. That's about the best thing a good libertarian could expect to hear. Now if only they'd uphold my right to be wrong (like eating a Hardee's Thickburger, or not saving for retirement) then I'd be pretty set.

I'm amazed that people remained smart here...

2005-01-22T20:06:00.000-06:00

I just saw this article about a satanist who was assaulted because of his religion. His assaulters are being charged with a hate crime. As soon as I saw the article, I started looking around for the most biased article I could find that said something along the lines of "it's a hate crime if they attack something I like, but if it's some satanist it's almost an act of goodwill!" but I couldn't find anything like that. It seems most reporters at least are accepting that under hate crime legislation, satanism is just as protected as christianity, hinduism, or islam. In fact, the only person speaking out is Joseph Seehusen of the Libertarian Party. In this article he seems a bit biased, but it seems that he's trying to direct people's biased anger toward the legislation itself to get it repealed.

Excited about School!

2005-01-19T01:24:00.000-06:00

This semester is going to be hard, but really cool! I'm interested in every one of my classes except for web design, which I took intentionally as a blow off. Hopefully I can get some more productive work done in that class since it takes place in a computer lab. w00t!

That just ain't right

2005-01-19T01:02:00.000-06:00

I don't know if I'm repulsed or aroused by this.

Last day of work

2005-01-14T16:06:00.000-06:00

This is my last post from the office. I'm not going to be working during the semester so I can focus on SkyBlue Mobile, and hopefully that takes off and I work full time there. Hostway's been fantastic, but I can't give up the chance with a startup. Although I'm certainly going to miss some of the eye candy around the office. ;)

And for some humor in this post, check out this quote I just pulled from someone's away message: "It takes lots of drunk dads missing dance recitals before you decide to blow a goat on the internet for fifty bucks. And if that disappears, where does that leave me on a Friday night with my new high speed connection?"

Bittorrentgasm

2005-01-13T16:24:00.000-06:00

As anyone who knows me can probably tell you, I'm exceedingly interested in decentralized networks. As soon as bittorrent came out I've wanted to produce something to further the effort. I was going to make a multiple-download client, but then many came out before I got started. Then, when rumors of a decentralized bittorrent started circulating and more specific talk of eXeem surfaced, I got really excited about a fully decentralized swarming download network. I have decided that I will create a decentralized bittorrent network, possibly as a component of a larger project. I have begun some preliminary design work already and have only a few problems left to overcome (until I can start looking at the next set of problems ;) ) and I'm really excited about the whole thing.

Anyway, the reason I went off on that tangent was because of this article that does a good job of articulating the decentralized bittorrent idea. It's worth a read for your inner philosopher-geek.

Mac Mini

2005-01-13T14:31:00.000-06:00

This thing is cool. I've always been a bit "Mac-curious," and now I can quench that curiosity without spending an arm and a leg. I'll probably get one of these eventually, though not any time soon.

A Flurry of Links

2005-01-13T13:49:00.000-06:00

I came across a lot of interesting things today, so here's a digest:

The Monster and the Nursery - An amusing article about how commie-pinko liberals will need to recruit conservative's children to have any political power in the future.
A Minister-Free Health Care System - A brief article outlining why the Swiss health care system works better than ours. (here's a hint: free market)
The United States Is Not Stingy - Talks about all the contributions the US has given to Tsunami victims, and why it's good that we are in fact stingy when it comes to development aid.
Ownership Society Includes Property Confiscation - A brief blurb on Cato's Daily Dispatch addressing Bush's support of eminent domain.
Apple v. Google: A Matter of Timing - An interesting look at the future of Apple and Google, and how their product lines will clash sooner than you may think.

Have fun with all that. On a side note, I just noticed how cool eweek.com is. Throughout that last article are links to other articles that discuss what you just read. Some might call that advertising. I call it a mesh network of information; allowing me to follow any path I want to learn exactly what I want to learn. Pretty sweet.

Wheee!!!

2005-01-11T01:17:00.000-06:00

I got my scooter running and drove it around the neighborhood. That was awesome! Wheeee!

Stupid people

2005-01-10T12:43:00.000-06:00

A few fairly recent links from The Agitator brought a few exceedingly stupid people.

First, this woman. The initial stupid person is the cop who gave her a DUI ticket for driving her wheelchair. However, when you get to the very end of the article, she blindsides you with biting the head off a python. Despite my disgust at the implied jibe at my favorite programming language, that just ain't right.

Second, these people. "Oh noes, the beach has chairs and stores and things on it! They're manmade! Someone think of the children!" Someone is thinking of the children. They're thinking of the children whenever they sell a beach chair or a melon. They're making money to buy things like food, clothing, shelter, and maybe even college education for their children. So what do you think is more important: pristine beaches, or gainful employment?

Ugh

2005-01-08T22:40:00.000-06:00

I've been wanting a moped for at least 5 years, and looking for one on and off during that time. This week, I finally found one that didn't cost an arm and a leg and was close enough that I didn't have to pay $100+ to ship it here, so I bought it. I never made my desire for one a secret, and I told my parents about it before I bought it. This morning, I bought it and my dad had to tell my grandmother, who went nuts. She probably assumes I've already been hit by some drunk dopefiend who couldn't see me because it's so much smaller than a car and I'd be dead instantly because I'm not protected like in a car. Oh and also 95% of people who own mopeds are killed in accidents, but I don't know if that's an annual, monthly, minutely or whatever statistic.

So basically, now that I finally have the money and the opportunity to do something I really want, she's going to throw a fit about it. That really pisses me off. Of course I'm buying it despite her insane concerns, but it makes me feel bad that my actions are upsetting her so much and I have no real reason to be upset.

The Beginning of Essaying!

2005-01-07T21:57:00.000-06:00

I started composing a long post about how I see the future of software and the internet, but it got too long and I hadn't really gotten into my main point yet, so I'm writing it offline and will post it elsewher later, if I ever get timsaylor.com going. I'll be sure to keep my lack of readership updated when it's finished.

Life

2005-01-06T23:15:00.000-06:00

I really don't want this to turn into a livejournal (and all that connotes, even if I'm the only one who thinks it), but I really hate being alone. I really miss having someone who doesn't have to care about me but does anyway. I just want that back. I want to be able to call someone whenever I want for no reason. I want someone I can hang out with and be perfectly comfortable being myself. It's the only thing I can't live without and the only thing I can't have.

I know people are probably going to give me a hard time about this post but I don't care.

1337 ski11z

2005-01-05T15:51:00.000-06:00

The other day I noticed a new bug in a piece of code I was testing at work (though the bug was not in a part of the code I was testing). I tracked down what was causing the bug, identified a fix, and got it put into the main codebase for distribution, all while my boss didn't want to fix it because no customers were having a problem, then because he thought the issue was elsewhere. I = awesome!

The .gov 0wnz j00

2005-01-05T13:33:00.000-06:00

Someone told me about this a while ago, but I'm looking at used scooters online and it came up again. Apparently nobody actually owns their own vehicles, the state does, and there's no way to actually own it yourself. If anyone knows about this first hand, please leave a comment or email me.

Social Security Reform

2005-01-04T13:18:00.000-06:00

Bush is apparently starting to work on Social Security reform. I'm glad he's following through on this particular campaign promise.

For anybody out there who thinks benefit cuts are a bad thing, remember that it's my money that you think some old person deserves. If I choose to give it to them that's one thing, but you're advocating pointing a gun at me and forcing me to give away my money. (If you don't think that's what you're doing, take the process to it's logical conclusion. You are.)

Converging technology of mobile computing

2005-01-03T11:49:00.000-06:00

This BBC article reiterates what I've been saying all along, that people want a "Star Trek" like data pad device and the cell phone will evolve into that. I can't wait!

I've moved into my new apartment but we don't have internet access yet, so my blogging will be rare (as if that's news) and only from work. But nobody reads this anyway, so who cares.

Double Secret Probation Pirates

2005-01-02T01:59:00.000-06:00

I'm not so sure that I believe this wired article's assertion that a vast, well organized, non-profit motivated conspiracy for digital piracy exists, but it's certainly an interesting read. I just don't believe that all that effort could go into piracy with no real benefit coming out aside from 1337 points; just the bandwidth alone should bankrupt this whole scheme.

Happy New Year!

2005-01-01T23:25:00.000-06:00

Hooray for 2005!

On my future

2004-12-30T14:56:00.000-06:00

I just had a talk with my boss about whether I'm interested in a full time job when I graduate. There was some positive and some negative. He said that Hostway could offer some support to our startup, whether financial or service based, which is extremely awesome. What's not so good is that he wants me to make a descision as to whether I'm going to join as a full time developer around March. Hopefully our startup will have made a major turn (either up or down) by then. Fortunately, I imagine that if we don't have some serious interest in SkyBlue by then, we aren't going to take off, so that will make it easier.

R.I.P. Jerry Orbach

2004-12-30T11:07:00.000-06:00

Jerry Orbach, the famous Det. Lenny Briscoe from Law and Order, died on tuesday. He was one of my favorite actors of all time.

ASIMO runs!

2004-12-29T14:15:00.000-06:00

See ASIMO, Honda's walking robot, running here. (possibly running from his evil creators, only to return later, with more power, and destroy them).

Open source "invades" commercial code

2004-12-29T13:28:00.000-06:00

Companies are spending lots of money on consultants and software to find out if their code contains open source code. This whole affair seems pretty stupid to me. I guess that's what you get when you hire bad programmers. Article here.

Hardest quiz ever

2004-12-29T10:15:00.000-06:00

The guardian has an extremely hard quiz posted. It's got some history to it, but I'll let you RTFA and find out what that means. ;) I got a 3.

Work work work

2004-12-29T09:35:00.000-06:00

Well, I would really like to start writing in this blog, but I have absolutely no time to do so with a full time job. I've got a lot of projects going on that I'll be talking about next semester (both school related and personal), but for now you get nothing but this IOU.