Computer Quotes

March 8th, 2009

I came across some interesting “computer qoutes” on http://www.brainyquote.com. Couldn’t help it but post a few here.

A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
Emo Philips

Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don’t need to be done.
Andy Rooney

The good news about computers is that they do what you tell them to do. The bad news is that they do what you tell them to do.
Ted Nelson

The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.
Sydney J. Harris

Why is it drug addicts and computer afficionados are both called users?
Clifford Stoll

StumbleUpon’ing Into Yahoo! Search via Yahoo! Pipes

March 6th, 2009

If you see “No Results” in the box above, it’s because WordPress messes up with the javascript embed.

You can try this on your own StumbleUpon.com account @ http://pipes.yahoo.com/yipes/yourstumbles

What is this ? How does this happen ?

Per Yahoo!;

Pipes is a powerful composition tool to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web.

And it really is.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re Gonna Be In the Hudson

March 4th, 2009

This is sorta old at when I’m posting this, but just came across the videos.

“We’re gonna be in the Hudson,” Sullenberger says at 3:29:28.

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2009/02/sully-calmly-to.html

More animations at the Wired.com

Comparing Open Source Licenses

March 3rd, 2009

Comparing Open Source Licenses

I StumbledUpon this chart during StumblingUponing. More about it can be found here.

Time Tracking At Its Best

February 27th, 2009
the best way to track time

No Comment ! Really !

Twitter: Social, Professional But Is It Too Personal?

February 27th, 2009

Twitter LogoI’ve been hanging out in the Twitter realm for a while, and enjoying it most of the time. Having real-time updates about the activities of the geeky people with whom I share similar interests is awesome. I’m also using a few tools to follow certain topics I’m keen on as well. Keeps me up-to-date with what’s happening about the stuff. It’s not obtrusive, it’s simple, it’s short.

Currently, I have a reasonable number of people that I follow and pretty much same number of followers. I know most of them via the Open Source projects that I am involved with, some close friends, some very talented folks that I would like to follow their updates, some project tweets such as Google AppEngine, YUI etc.,  I usually use TwitterFox when I’m around a computer (that’s like 90% of the time), and Twidroid on my G1, and sometimes the Twitter.com itself. So far so good!

I learn significantly from many of the people that I follow, I sometimes laugh at their interesting moments, and share a 140 character virtual memory with them. Nothing wrong with that.

However, I don’t necessarily need to know about

  • your personal life in every detail.
  • your shower schedule
  • the size of your last poop (if it’s noteworthy post it up on ratemyshite.com)
  • if you ate dinner or what you ate every night.
  • how much gas left in your tank
  • your political views ten times a day
  • your personal agenda via the institutional Twitter account you are controlling
  • ...(i’ll keep on adding to this list)

In my opinion,  if a person has an excessive tweeting pattern around the subjects I wrote about, he/she becomes a “twammer“. (spammer!)

When someone starts clogging my feed with sleep and shower schedules,  it gets unnecessarily personal and it is too much information.  I must admit, it bothers me. That’s a bit more time than I would actually like to spend on Twitter.

Don’t mean to be mean. Just putting it out the way it is. I’m pretty sure that many would agree with most of the things I put above.

Now, go and tweet about this post :)

moseasymedia is becoming mbedia

February 19th, 2009

One of the well-known media embedding extensions for MiaCMS, Joomla!, and Mambo, moseasymedia (mos-easy-media), is changing its name. The new name will be mbedia (m-bedia , sounds more like em-bedia).

mbedia will have all the existing capabilities of moseasymedia, and will utilize YUI Javascript libraries for popup videos to avoid all namespace conflicts with other Javascript libraries. There are a few other goodies in the bag for mbedia, yet to be announced.

The new project will be backward-compatible with all versions moseasymedia and support both {moseasymedia …..} and {mbedia ….} tags.

Click here for more information on Brilaps Wiki site. And click here for the moseasymedia demo.

Two Simple Scripts to Detect Spammers in SMF

February 14th, 2009

I’ve been going through some spring cleaning in our forum today, and ended up running few SQL scripts against our SMF forum database to get a better idea of who might be spamming us.

I got some counts from those simple scripts below, and registered a lot of “Ban on IP” and “Ban on email” triggers. Perhaps, they might be useful for somebody else too.

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SELECT `memberIP`, count(`memberIP`) AS `how_many` FROM `smf_members` WHERE `is_activated=0` GROUP BY `memberIP` ORDER BY `how_many` DESC

SELECT `memberIP`, count(`memberIP`) AS `how_many` FROM `smf_members`GROUP BY `memberIP` ORDER BY `how_many` DESC

This spamming stuff sucks big time. Every other month, I end up wasting 4-5 hours of my time trying to clean the crap of those low-lives leave behind.

Txtract 1.6 Released – Email the SMS Backup, Selectable HTML Styles

February 13th, 2009

Here comes a newer, better faster Txtract on the Android Market.

Txtract 1.6 on a Friday the 13th.

Version 1.6 supports

  • Selectable Styles for HTML backup
  • Email the backup
  • Better look & feel
  • Faster
  • Minor bug fixes

Txtract Main

Txtract EMail

Txtract Select Style

And a few more goodies in this release.

What’s Up With GoDaddy?

February 12th, 2009

For so long, I recommended, and advocated for the services of GoDaddy. Cheap domain names, cheap hosting, free email, sorta-easy-to-use admin consoles. Their best game was their super nice, very helpful customer service. For many years, I deemed GoDaddy Customer Support as the best across all industries.

In the last couple of months, I’ve been noticing a sharp decline in those qualities. Not saying that, the representatives are not nice on the phone, however it almost sounds like their knowledge levels are not as good as the past years anymore, and they sound almost unhappy !

One of the last things happened is that, foodaddy charges us $83 for a service that we did not renew. Oddly enough, way before the charge happened, we receive an email from them stating that, the service is canceled, and will not be renewed. That’s great, right. We never intended to renew it anyway. Come two weeks, there is our lovely $83 charge. Called them and canceled the service while the rep was on the phone and started waiting for the refund. The refund didn’t show up that day, so I emailed them the next day. GoDaddy’s response was that it may take 5-7 days for the refund go back to our account. Not a huge deal. Here comes the bang-ending. In less than 3 hours, I get the refund processed email for $76. What the heck happened to the $7 ? Lost in translation ? You charge me incorrectly, and I am paying for your mistake! Very well done GoDaddy!

This post is not really about the $7. I spend more on cigarettes a day.

I would still keep my domain registrations and emails with them, but do not plan to purchase any other services from them.

My current feelings for GoDaddy would only change, if they introduce MiaCMS in their Hosting Connection program.  :)

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