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Showing posts from January, 2006

From del.icio.us [2006-01-31]

Mathematical photography Math is beautiful. / (tags: photography math art ) Google on Google.cn Filtering our search results clearly compromises our mission. Failing to offer Google search at all to a fifth of the world's population, however, does so far more severely. / (tags: politics china google ) Motorist Vs Courier - toronto : citynoise.org Road rage. / (tags: photography ) Planarity.net Untangle! / (tags: math fun )

'Do nothing'

For evil to triumph, all that is necessary is for good men to do nothing. Link

Pretty watch

Here's a neat precision watch , and with a $220,000 tag to boot. Take that, Tag! (via BoingBoing)

Hello world!

Moving in to this host, courtesy of a very cool guy. :) Thanks, Ramil !

Cute, but...

Chinese authorities are apparently trying cuteness to warn users that Big Brother is watching them. Well, duh... Surveillance is not cute. [ via Boing Boing ]

Moved my status page

I've just installed DokuWiki in my Metawire shell account, so I'm moving my status page there from PBWiki . I'll be using the shell account more often now until I've found a suitable (read: cheap ) hosting service, and get my own domain name.

'We are such stuff...'

Got this childhood dream of becoming an astronaut, or at least work with NASA . And with news like this about the Stardust project , who wouldn't? [ via Boing Boing ]

There must be something to Web 2.0...

If Madonna is joining the bandwagon. I feel weird. :P [ via Monkey Bites ]

Google Talk opens up (PTB post)

Google Talk announces that it is opening its IM service to XMPP-compliant services. Read all about it in my Pinoy Tech Blog post . [ via Pinoy Tech Blog ]

Hash you!

Fragged my Ubuntu LTSP install. Details over at the network janitor's log. [ via Network janitor's log ]

Ubuntu LTSP reinstall

Fragged my Ubuntu LTSP install. I thought doing a sudo apt-get remove openoffice.org;sudo apt-get install openoffice.org2 would upgrade OpenOffice.org. Well, it did, but it also removed xserver-xorg . Ack! Dumb me. So I tried Breezy and MueCow. No dice. The tftpd-hpa service won't start. So back to Hoary, I did. X on the clients won't start. The XSERVER = auto directive in lts.conf didn't work for some reason. Turns out XDCMP wasn't allowing requests. I just had to remove the hash in /etc/X11/xmd/Xaccess : #* #any host can get a login window Slap my forehead! Ten times. :P

Using Flickr to organize my toy collection

Image
I've posted this howto in my toy-collection journal. I collect diecast Mini Coopers, and I've been wanting to organize my miniscule collection for sometime. Well, Flickr does the trick for me. [ via Me want Minis! ]

'Pearls Before Swine' had me ROTFL

LMAO on this one . Speaking of job hunts, I'm on one right now . Not that I don't like my current work — heck, I'm in for more interesting things — but I need fresh opportunities. [ via Pearls Before Swine ]

Google in Braille

Google is now in Braille. Well, sort of. Today being Louis Braille's birthday , Google pays tribute to the inventor of the reading and writing system used by the blind and visually impaired . Cool. :)

Search by sketch

Looking for a picture but all you have is a rough sketch? Use retrievr , yet another Web 2.0 (?) (experimental)service that uses Flickr to search pictures by making a rough sketch. The results may not be what you expect, but they are always interesting — astonishing, even. It's not a face-recognition thingie like (gosh! I forgot that Indian-named alpha app), and it has its limitations. I guess it makes its matches based on color and basic shapes. Give it a whirl. [ via retrievr - search by sketch ]

Cut and paste!

Just got myself SuprGlu ed. Sorry, I was looking for a catchier line, but hey, I'm excited over this thing. In a previous post, I was ranting about how to "leverage" Web 2.0 for work, when I stumbled upon SuprGlu . As their blurb says, it is "about bringing the pieces of your web content together into one central place for you, your friends, and maybe even your friends to-be." What SuprGlu does is gather data from various sources ( Blogger , delicious , Flickr , and other Web 2.0-ish sites), using those sources' RSS feeds, and display them in pretty themeable pages. Super! (Sorry, got carried away.) Think: feed aggregator, prettified and webified. :) Now, if only it will also accept OPML files like regular readers... [ via cut-and-paste! on SuprGlu ]

Raring for Web 2.0

What better way to start off the new year than to brew my TOR for the first two quarters of 2006? Had a little talk with the boss yesterday on my workload and objectives for this year. Our talk led to blogs and wikis, and how we can use it for our project, the Open Academy for Philippine Agriculture, specifically for the Pinoy Farmers Internet. While I was reviewing the outline of my TOR , two items caught my eye: Research and deploy new technologies related to Web 2.0. Study and implement interactive web services (e.g. blogs, wikis, etc.). Hmmm... I don't particularly see my manager as a PHB, but somehow I got worried. Web 2.0? Are you kidding? Heck, we've barely managed to get past "Browsing the Web for Dummies". This is not to denigrate our, er, clients, but for the past two years, we've been training them on basic computer operations (for lack of a better term) — as in how to control the mouse, what is the world wide web and how do you use it to look for porn,...

Using hashlimit to foil SSH bruteforce attempts

Add this to the iptables ruleset: iptables -A INPUT -m hashlimit -m tcp -p tcp --dport 22 --hashlimit 1/min --hashlimit-mode srcip --hashlimit-name ssh -m state --state NEW -j ACCEPT The rule limits one connection to the SSH port from one IP address per minute. For more information, man iptables and iptables -m hashlimit --help . Reference: https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2005-August/msg00061.html

Oopss?

Wired News presents the 2005 Foot-in-Mouth Awards . Here are a few noteables: "I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google." — Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, in statements attributed to him in court documents by former Microsoft engineer and recent Google hire Mark Lucovsky. "Most people don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?" — Thomas Hesse, president of Sony BMG's global digital business division, in response to complaints that anti-copying technology on some of its CDs creates serious security vulnerabilities in computers.

Make your own speech bubble!

Want your own speech bubbles? Go make one !

Miscellaneous Siemens TC35i AT commands

AT^SCKS? - SIM connection AT+CSMS=1 - Message service AT+COPS? - Operator selection AT+CREG? - Network registration AT+CSQ - Signal strength AT&V - Status AT+CNMI=1,2,0,1,1 - Modem init string

Spending time offline

Happy new year to all! Random bits over here. Had a refreshing break with my family, and away from the keyboard. Cooked a mean pasta dish (memo to self: tone down on the tarragon) for Christmas eve dinner. Did some serious garden and household work (fixing leaky taps, pulling weeds in my wife's garden, drilling a new towel bar). Spent quality and quantity time with the wife and kid, too. In our trip to the metro for my niece's baptism, my wife and I took our four-year old son, Gabriel , on a ride on the LRT . Yey. Jeepney ride from Caloocan to LRT Monumento: Php7.00. Single-journey card from Monumento to LRT Central Terminal Taft: Php15.00. The look on Gabriel's face when the train started to move: priceless. :) . . . And: will somebody please remind me in a few years why reunions suck? High school reunions, I mean. Okay, so I go there, raring to meet old faces. Then as the night progresses (or degrades, depending on one's viewpoint), things start to get boring. I learn...