Category Archives: Uncategorized

I really don’t know what phone I should get to replace my trusted Palm Treo 755p. I really think there won’t be a phone that can match its utility. It’s not a flashy phone (my friends call it “the brick”), … Continue reading →

I’m finally making some progress on a tricky computer repair I’ve been dealing with in my downtime basically this entire past week. The 10.5-year-old Pentium II computer that I have been using as web and media server in my home … Continue reading →

Oh great… Account Lockdown: Unusual Activity Detected This account has been locked down due to unusual account activity. It may take up to 24 hours for you to regain access. And all I did was send 86 MB of vacation … Continue reading →

Mathias: Now, a computer is Turing complete if and only if it can compute everything that can be computed with such a Turing machine, i.e. with a device that has a read/write tape and a finite state automaton. And that’s … Continue reading →

A friend and I got rear-ended tonight. Not our fault, but our backs and necks hurt, and the car is probably totaled. I think the moral of the story is: You could be killed any time, so if someone offers … Continue reading →

I think I have finally figured out how how to bookmark Google Calendar searches. The problem was that the search parameters did not seem to be passed using URL “get” parameters. The Google Calendar URL was always just https://www.google.com/calendar/render and … Continue reading →

Stephen had some questions about Java on the Mac. I tried to answer them. From the DrJava site, I see notes that a JDK is already installed on OS X machines—that explains why I can’t find downloads for it. There … Continue reading →

These are really cool panorama pictures of my university: Experience Rice University’s 300-acre campus and its urban surroundings by taking our virtual tour http://bit.ly/a7Yt0I If you click on the fourth image from the left in the navigation bar at the … Continue reading →

find . -name \*html -or -name \*inc | xargs grep -l "\.owlnet\." | xargs -n 1 -i bash -c ‘p4 edit {}; sed -i "s/\.owlnet\./.clear./g" {}’

I guess it was only a question of time before someone wrote a programming language in LOLcat dialect: LOLcode. This listing, for example, prints out the numbers one to ten: 123456789HAI CAN HAS STDIO? I HAS A VAR IM IN … Continue reading →

Friend: “Do you really want an academic job?” Mathias: “Yes.” Friend: “Why? Is that what you’re comfortable with?” Mathias: “It actually isn’t the most comfortable, but it is the most rewarding.” *sigh*

Hurricane Alex, the first hurricane of the 2010 season, is predicted to make landfall south of the US-Mexico border. Still, it’s a reminder to stock up and start paying attention again. And to realize that, nearly two years after Ike, … Continue reading →

I just did an upgrade to WordPress 3.0, and I also gave the site a small face lift. The new default theme, Twenty Ten, actually looks quite nice. Everything seems to be working, but if you notice any problems, please … Continue reading →

OK, now I also want an Apple iPad: Papers for iPad has been released. I still haven’t made it to the Apple Store to play with an iPad since it was released, but the visit is firmly on my To … Continue reading →

My mother and I visited the Koerperwelten Bremen exhibition today. It is one of the Body Worlds traveling exhibitions that display real human bodies that have undergone plastination. Here are some images from the exhibition in Bremen. There has been … Continue reading →

While looking for information on Soot, I found this little gem here by Chris Pickett: swd, Subversion Word Diff. This is perfect for writing LaTeX papers in a group. For example, when I do an svn diff on our Mint … Continue reading →