Monthly Archives: October 2008
Favorite Function Key
Function keys were designed to be ultimate shortcuts or “hot-keys” on your keyboard. By definition, they were there so you could bind some sort of a function or a command to them for quick access. They are like the speed … Continue reading
Open Letter to the future George Lucas Estate
George Lucas is an old man. He will die soon. I’m addressing this open letter to the future holders of his estate. You dear Sir and/or Madam will one day own the rights to the very popular Star Wars franchise. … Continue reading
Magic As Programming
Magic exists in almost every fantasy world out there. In some worlds magic is scarce and feared, while in others it is ubiquitous and commonplace. However the archetype of a wizard in most fantasy settings is modeled after medieval alchemists … Continue reading
Ubuntu: Change Sensitivity of the Synaptics Touchpad
I hardly ever use the touchpad on my laptop. At work, my morning routine is plugging in my external monitor, ethernet cable and the USB hub into the back of my machine. Yes, I could get a docking station but … Continue reading
Vim Cheatsheet
Today’s post is not really a post. It is an attempt to create a workable Vim cheat-sheet. I know that there hundreds vi/vim chat-sheets online, some better than other but naturally none of them is complete and includes all the … Continue reading
World of Goo
I don’t usually go for the casual games but I’m making an exception for World of Gooo. It is a terribly, terribly addictive puzzle game that will suck you in for hours. I totally blame Shamus for bringing it to … Continue reading
Please Stop Forwarding me ‘The Secret’ Video
Normally I wouldn’t discuss this sort of stuff here, but in the last week or so 3 different people sent me a link to this video (or a similar one). This included my cousin who really should have known better. … Continue reading
Writing a Minimalistic MVC Framework in PHP
This is an outcome of a conversation I had recently. Apparently saying that MVC is a fairly simple concept is some sort of blasphemy. But it is. You really don’t need to use the almighty RAILS or a rails like … Continue reading
The Practical Reasons to Hate DRM
I admit it – when it comes to music, I’m really a simpleton. True music buffs probably would call me “part of the problem” or something equally bad. I may hear a song on the radio, or perhaps in a … Continue reading
Vim LaTex
I noticed that in the past I produced several posts about combining LaTex and Emacs. While I do like Emacs and respect it’s formidable power I do not consider myself an Emacs user. Most of my day-to-day work is done … Continue reading
Firefly: First Impression
A while back, I watched Serenity and really enjoyed it. This was a surprise for me, and the very same day I vowed to get the whole series on DVD. I wanted to see if it was as good as … Continue reading
WYSIWYG is a Lie
Yes boys and girls, it’s that time of the month again when I rant about the evils of WYSIWYG. Let me tell you a little story. In the beginning there was text. That’s all we had really. We used white … Continue reading
Using Dropbox without Gnome
If you haven’t heard about Dropbox you have probably been living under a rock for the last month or two. It is the latest and the greatest file syncing project out there. I usually describe it to people as a … Continue reading
Bridging Wireless Networks with Linksys WET200
I run into an interesting networking problem recently. My company is testing a hosted VoIP solution from Packet8. I don’t think I have ever mentioned our adventures with the PhonePeople™ as we call them around the office. This is probably … Continue reading
PHP: File Download Script – Straming Binary Data to the Browser
I don’t think I have posted this snipped of code here yet. It is old as hell, but I use it all over the place lately so I figured I just post it here for future reference. The script below … Continue reading
Left Hand of Darkness
It’s funny but Left Hand of Darkness is one of these books that seems to inspire one of two distinct reactions in it’s readers. Some find it interesting, thoughtful and intriguing while others think it’s hopelessly dull and boring. I … Continue reading
Office Pranks
Let’s talk about harmless office pranks. I don’t really talk about the hard core BOFH stuff here – just harmless fun. I’m sure everyone has at least one or two of these things to share. Whether you were the one … Continue reading
Slick and Rumpled Images
It’s funny how sometimes bits of info you read from totally different sources, sometimes sync up in a profound way. For example, sometime in August I have read an excellent article by Errol Morris titled Photography as a Weapon. The … Continue reading
WoW Considered Boring
I just wanted to say that I’m officially bored with WoW. I predicted that this will happen, but it took a bit longer than I expected. Remember all these posts I made in which I said how the game continues … Continue reading
Identifying External Links With CSS
As you may have noticed, recently I started identifying external links on this website with a little arrow symbol: ⇗. Most people agree that this is a neat idea – little visual cue that tells you the link points to … Continue reading
Hyperion
Hyperion by Dan Simmons is a rather interesting book. It is really an analogy of short stories taking place in the same universe, and connected with common narrative. The individual pieces could be read alone, outside the novel without losing … Continue reading
Firefox 3 Thumb Button brings up Save As dialog
This has been driving me nuts since I have upgraded to Firefox 3.0.1 on my laptop like a month ago. I’m still running Gutsy on that thing, and only the beta version (which crashes a lot) is in the repositories. … Continue reading
Vim Tips
Hey kids! Guess what time it is? It’s time for some Vim Tips! What? Don’t make that face! Vim is awesome! Don’t give me that “B-b-but mistur Luke, we don’t use vim!” That won’t work with me again! You know … Continue reading