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Bashing: comparing public reaction of the release of captives in the United
2009-08-09 17:20:00
The recent return of Laura Ling and Euna Lee from 140 days of captivity in North Korea is cause for much celebration and happiness. They are safe and unharmed, and the rest of the world can now breathe easily knowing that they are back home. Ever since they were captured, vigils were held all across ...
More About: Public , United , Release , Reaction

Driver?s license? Check!
2009-08-01 17:41:00
I think being able to drive is almost a quintessentially American rite of passage from teendom to adulthood. Even before having a serious boy- or girlfriend, even before seriously considering investing in one?s college education, even before setting in stone one?s career choices, everyone has a license, and not having one is peculiar. The ...
More About: Life , Driver , Check , License

A perfect killing solution?
2009-07-26 05:51:00
The BBC Horizon channel recently aired UK MP Michael Portillo’s attempts to find a humane solution to execution (see it here). He sets out looking for a method that a) does not require medical expertise, because doctors abide by the Hippocratic law, preventing them from doing anything that will contribute to death, b) is quick and painless, c) ...
More About: Writings , Perfect , Solution , Killing

Don?t believe your eyes
2009-07-25 19:26:00
You probably won’t believe me when I say that the two bands of green and blue are actually the same color. It’s a bit easier to see when you isolate the bands: The actual color has hexadecimal value 00ff99, which is lime green. The orange and pink swirls interspersing each area tricks our eyes to seeing ...
More About: Life , Eyes

Free create your own website places reviewed
2009-07-20 03:33:00
Where can I make my own website? It’s a question I get a lot when people balk at the thought of paying me to design it for them *laughs*. Here’s a list of places I’ve reviewed. Weeebly Time to create a site: 1 minute (see result) Number of templates available: 65 Ease of use: Drag and drop makes it ...
More About: Website , Free , Places , Create

I?m listed on Amazon!
2009-07-07 04:53:00
This book is a visual narrative and history of the Swarthmore Fire and Protective Association, the volunteer fire company I was a member of for four years. It’s small, but it’s rich with first-hand documents dating back to the 19th century. The book was published as a commemoration for the company’s 100th year of existence.
More About: Life , Amazon , Listed

Comparing jQuery grid and table plugins
2009-07-04 06:02:00
I was curious what differences there were between AJAX grids and tables that were available for sorting, paging and otherwise organizing content for easy visualization. Here I’ve listed the three most popular ones, along with their differences. jqGrid Flexigrid DataTable s Data format JSON, XML JSON, XML or existing data Existing HTML Sorting Server-side (SQL ‘ORDER BY’). Multicolumn sorting supported. Server-side Client-side. Multicolumn sorting supported. Pagination JSON/XML (server-side) Server-side Client-side User/Auto resizing ...
More About: Plugins , Coding , Jquery

The problem with browsers
2009-06-23 04:47:00
Opera Unite, Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 8, Chrome, Safari 4. The recent spate of browsers that will “revolutionize the way people surf the internet” seems to be as prolific as the emergence of search engines (read: Bing, WolframAlfa, Cuil). I didn’t even know half of these existed. It certainly doesn’t help it with the common consumer ...
More About: Browsers , Coding , Problem

Home Sweet American Culture
2009-06-17 23:31:00
As I have had the opportunity of house hunting in the past few weeks in a few areas of Massachussetts, it gave me a few things to consider. Some homes are just too darned big, in my opinion, but clearly aren’t big enough for some. The American Dream, if there’s any remain of it in the present ...
More About: Life , Culture , Home , Sweet

Radio button UI
2009-06-04 17:01:00
An online banking security prompt asks me whether or not the computer I’m using is a public computer or not: Problem: Even though there is a lot of text associated with each radio button, I have to navigate to the button itself each time to select one or the other option (frustratingly, the site assumes that ...
More About: Radio , Button

Reflecting Upon the Swarthmore Experience
2009-06-02 23:31:00
It is hard to be unbiased towards one’s alma mater, particularly since college experiences do not often give opportunities for comparison. Undeniably, though, the college experience becomes a defining point of one’s mental and social capacity, and the fresh, straight-out-of-college reflections I write here will be interesting to revisit at a later date. What Swarthmore has ...
More About: Life , Experience

A Job Applicant?s Declaration
2009-05-05 04:01:00
“Assist in the analysis, development and implementation of preventive actions which proactively resolve product, process and systems issues.” BS detector? Check. Well, let’s see. I’m looking for a job. Stated, that the applicant has had enough with entering past job positions into endless forms, Declared, that the applicant feels that making one’s skills look good on paper or ...
More About: Life , Declaration

Goodbye, You Were Never Welcome Anyways
2009-04-25 06:54:00
Japanese coffee plantation workers in Brazil, 1930. Photo courtesy of the Museu Histórico da Imigração Japonesa I thought, wow, look at these weirdos! What in the world are they anyway? They looked Japanese, but they weren’t real Japanese. They acted completely differently, spoke a foreign tongue, and dressed in strange ways. They were like fake Japanese, ...
More About: Life , Goodbye

Pronouncing President Obama
2009-04-11 19:40:00
I’m a fan of the BBC world service radio because it keeps me up to date on happenings around the world while I can do other things like cleaning up my room. But lately I’ve heard several transgressions on the pronunciation of Barack Obama (listen to the first recording) and I wondered how other newsreaders ...
More About: President , Writings , Language

Rethinking the way to make money online
2009-04-09 23:37:00
With the Associated Press raising a row about how to reign in its news sources, twitter banging its head on how to make revenue, and Encarta being dropped because of bad marketing, one cannot help but notice that businesses are scrambling to maintain their revenues in this cash-strapped economy. So here are some things that ...
More About: Web Design , Money , Make Money , Make Money Online , Online

Living the Stress of Job Search
2009-04-02 22:13:00
There are few things more stressful to a graduating senior (such as myself) than wondering what the future holds. For some, that would be graduate school. For me, as an Engineer keen on getting my hands dirty and all, I wanted to spend some time working, and over the course of these few months, I ...
More About: Life , Living , Search , Stress

Explaining the Credit Crisis
2009-03-11 19:09:00
I’m not always keen on a) showing videos or b) blatantly copy and pasting someone else’s work, but I think a more knowledgeable crowd is better, particularly in light of the current financial crisis, so here goes an excellent video by Jonathan Jarvis explaining it all.
More About: Credit , Crisis

Rethinking Rebranding
2009-03-09 06:03:00
I have to admit, I’m not one of the many people who think Pepsi’s new rebranding of their logo and drink is a bad idea. If anything, it represents the audacity of providing a fresh face to such a famous and iconic brand, and I think they’ve done a pretty good job. Brands are becoming ...

Another Dimension of Time
2009-03-08 16:24:00
University of Southern California physics professor Itzhak Bars has suggested (in somewhat dated news) what the Telegraph called a “heretical idea”: the possibility that there is an additional dimension to time. According to Bars, the world we see around us is merely a “shadow” of a six-dimensional world. Think of a 3D object like your hand ...
More About: Time , Writings , Dimension

Data, Overwritten
2009-03-03 03:23:00
The ironic part about stories like how the original Journalspace collapsed because of a failed backup (in the form of an overwrite that could not be recovered) is that people laugh and point fingers and claim it will never happen to them, and yet it shows its ugly face in moments least expected. I heard from ...
More About: Life , Data , Coding

Recovering Data from a Solid State Drive
2009-02-18 19:55:00
One of the things I’ve been working on the past week is recovering data from a broken ASUS EEE PC which was showing a “Disk Read Error” upon startup. It has been attributed to a bad sector issue (which can be recovered, apparently, by using an XP CD and Recovery Console and doing a chkdisk ...
More About: Drive , Data , Coding , State , Solid

Fixing Wordpress MU
2009-01-29 03:04:00
In trying to install the latest version of Wordpress MU (multiple user) for a client, I came across the following problem: No WPMU site defined on this host. If you are the owner of this site, please check Debugging WPMU for further assistance. The remedy lies in editing wp-blog-header.php to the following: <?php include( “index-install.php” ); // install ...
More About: Coding

Interesting Defunct United States Airlines
2008-11-15 23:06:00
Air California (AirCal) Operated: 1967 - 1987 Cause and result of demise: Ceased operations. Acquired piecemeal by American Airlines . Interesting fact: One marketing program used by Air California in the early to mid 1970s was to offer school field trips to Sacramento at $25 a head, where school children would be taken on a tour of the California ...
More About: United States , United , States

First Pictures of Shuttle Launch
2008-11-15 02:11:00
Besides seven astronauts, the space shuttle Endeavor’s cargo includes two new sleeping chambers, a second toilet, and a water-purification system, all of which will let NASA double the occupancy of the International Space Station to six. It also carries with it an odd assortment of live spiders, butterflies, and new technology to turn urine into ...
More About: Pictures , Life , Launch , Shuttle

3 Absolutely Free Places to Backup Your Data Online
2008-11-12 16:15:00
Storage capacity: 2GB (free upgrade to 10GB using the promotion code “linkup” Security: 2048 byte RSA and 256 bit AES. Works on: Windows, Mac, Linux Unique point: The interface is pretty snazzy and you just can’t beat the amount of space you get, and they have very robust security features. I’ve yet to notice the speed improvements that ...
More About: Backup , Free , Data , Places , Online

Tech Review Time Machine
2008-11-09 00:12:00
Download the article “Tim Berners-Lee: The Architect of the World Wide Web” from the July 1996 edition of the Tech nology Review . Download the article “Life on the Net: Chaos and Community On-Line” from the July 1994 edition of the Technology Review. Some highlights from the 1994 edition: “Mosaic is similar to Gopher but has a fancy graphical hypertext ...
More About: Machine , Time

Red vs Blue, 2000 - 2008
2008-11-07 16:41:00
Graphic provided in part by Daily Kos.
More About: Life , Blue , Red vs Blue , 2008

A Beautiful Phrase
2008-11-06 15:54:00
From the cafes of Beirut to the villages of Kenya, much of the world viewed Barack Obama’s triumph as an event that could repair the battered reputation of the United States, lift the aspirations of minorities everywhere, and renew the chances for diplomacy rather than war. From World reaction to President-elect Barack Obama’s win, Wire Reports. Above ...
More About: Life , Beautiful

Prediction Markets on the 2008 Presidential Election
2008-11-05 03:20:00
It’s election night and everyone is glued to their TV or PC screens, visiting live-feed and live-update sites (or hitting refresh). But I’m more interested about what people predict, and prediction markets are an excellent resource to find out. Basically prediction markets are where people wager real or fake money on the outcome of certain events, ...
More About: Presidential , Markets , Election , 2008

Movie Review: The Fall (2006)
2008-06-06 06:07:00
I had the fortune of going to see Tarsem Singh’s newest movie, “The Fall ”, which emerged in theaters on the 30th of June. The part-fantasy, part-reality movie takes place in Los Angeles in the 1920s and revolves around bedridden movie stuntman Roy Walker (Lee Pace), who, after being injured on a set, considers suicide but ...
More About: Movie , Movie Reviews , Movie Review , Review