Category Archives: Uncategorized

My apt building was struck by lightning Monday afternoon, and that fried half the building, apparently. Power was off for a day, the elevator is broken, and it killed my DSL modem and an ethernet card, even though both were … Continue reading →

I’ve noticed that SplashID crashes as well. I think I will try to find a replacement and than ask SplashData for a refund. $60 for this collection of fail is way too much. Jorte is pretty nice as a calendar, … Continue reading →

I have found that SplashID is buggy too. It crashes every other time I start it. I guess it’s time to say goodbye to SplashData. They don’t have their act together anymore. I found Jorte to be a pretty good … Continue reading →

How embarrassing. Gmail’s auto-completion changed for me today because I merged contacts on my Google and phone accounts. I frequently forward emails to “me” to have them stored on my private email as well, but “me” wasn’t me anymore. Instead, … Continue reading →

Yesterday I ended up buying a new phone. It was a pretty difficult decision, and I’m not nearly as sure that I made the right decision as when I bought my Palm Treo 755p over three years ago. Initially I … Continue reading →

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 →

[cci]find . -name \*html -or -name \*inc | xargs grep -l “\.owlnet\.” | xargs -n 1 -i bash -c ‘p4 edit {}; sed -i “s/\.owlnet\./.clear./g” {}'[/cci]

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: HAI 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 →