If I worked in the Capitol, or if I had a pilot's license, I think I would be really annoyed right now. The fact that the mere sight of a private plane in the restricted airspace surrounding Washington DC is enough to prompt evacuations seems a bit ridiculous. The most recent "scare" involved Georgian Scott [...]
James Traub's article in today's New York Times Magazine is an interesting treatment of the problems facing the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Alas, a number of factors (including the corrupt government, a lack of international interest, inaction by locally-based diplomats) cause him to take a gloomy outlook toward the country's future. However, I found [...]
There will be no posting here for a while, as I am moving. While the new house has working air conditioning (essential for these sultry Virginia nights), it does not currently have Internet access (the on-again, off-again access provided through the several wireless access points owned by my new neighbors do not count). Comments may [...]
(02:38:04) Me: actually, it's trying to get a internet connection so I < — at this point I was disconnected
…disconnected immediately after attempting to send…
(02:49:41) Me: did you get the message I sent ten min ago?
…disconnected immediately after attempting to send…
I get intermittent connectivity, as long as it is clear out (the slightest hint of [...]
OSCAR File Transfers Now Work for Clients on the Same Subnet
What does this mean? Absolutely nothing if you do not use Gaim, the multi-protocol, cross-platform, open source Instant Messenging client. The OSCAR protocol drives the AOL Instant Messenger network.
Check out the screenshot to the right. While "Send File" works fine some of the time, receiving [...]
As I reported back in June, the BBC's Radio 3 offered 9 Beethoven symphonies for free download on their website in a staggered period ending early this month. This article from the British newspaper The Independent comes via Scripting News. This is why the Internet can't have nice things anymore.
Managing director of the Naxos label, [...]
The second result in a Google search for 'gibraltar' is the CIA World Factbook's entry. As you can see, the page's description is "Good summary information, some glaring errors (water supply)." If only Wikipedia entries had such useful descriptions!
The Washington Post reports that among the changes coming from the Department of Homeland Security's reorganization is an end to the rule that passengers on airplanes entering and leaving Reagan National Airport remain seated for 30 minutes before landing and taking off. I remember when I was returning home for spring break, the young girl [...]
The Confusion is the second installment of Neil Stephenson's Baroque Cycle trilogy, which began with Quicksilver (ISBN: 0380977427) and ends with The System of the World (ISBN: 0060523875). In his 1999 bestselling novel Cryptonomicon (ISBN: 0380973464), Stephenson explained the role of cryptography in World War II by switching between two characters - the gung-ho Marine [...]
This is Martey Dodoo speaking: This is Martey Dodoo is now MarteyDodoo.com.
Why now? What was wrong with the old title?
Nothing was wrong with it, per se (although my inner minimalist did think the "This is" was a bit superfluous). It's been a bit over six months since the last title change, and to tell the [...]
Instead of reading the latest Harry Potter book, I spent last night reading Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha. I have intended to read the book since junior year of high school, when one of my friends noted similarities between an English essay I had written entitled "Under the Tire" with Hesse's novel Beneath the Wheel.
Siddhartha was far [...]
This BBC News article about William Crutchfield, a Georgian man who shot his postman in order to get sent to prison confuses me. I understand that Mr. Crutchfield has very large medical debts, and that he would prefer to be in prison than to be homeless, but the way he carried out his crime was [...]
It was still sunny outside when I started hearing the thunder. I could tell that the rain was coming, and that my Internet connection was going to disappear soon. Instead of spending the time reading the pages I quickly downloaded before the interference of falling raindrops wreaked havoc with my connection, I decided to take [...]
OSNews points at Daniel Iversen's page, "Windows 2000 on old computers with 32MB RAM." Since Windows 2000's minimum memory requirement is 64 MB, this is impressive, but not anything amazing (like getting Windows 2000 to run on your refrigerator). I assumed that Iversen's page would contain a number of technical tweaks to make Windows run [...]
Tagged 32 MB, Blaster, bloat, Daniel Iversen, DCOM RPC, Malware, Microsoft, patch, performance, tweaks, virus, Windows 2000, worm
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Considering I spent about 4 hours this morning reading the latest Harry Potter book (what can I say? I read fast), I figured it was past due time for me to write about Susanna Clarke's novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which I completed back in June. It is perhaps inevitable that my review will [...]
I was pleasantly surprised to see the results of DailyKos' July poll for the Democratic Party presidental nominee in 2008. Currently, Wesley Clark is in the lead with 37% of the votes. He also won the June poll. Of course, this does not make him a shoo-in for the nomination. As Kos writes, "Right now, [...]
Back during freshman year of college, my group of friends had a meme about not eating the stickers on fruit in Annenberg (the freshman dining hall). Alas, future Harvard freshmen might not have to worry about the danger of stickers, if the technology in this New York Times article comes to "fruition." Instead of stickers, [...]
Lately, my dreams have been worrying me. Normally, I retain some lucidity when dreaming (I have written about this topic twice before, here and here), which I think allows me a slightly greater margin of subconscious control over them. For example, I rarely have nightmares anymore. When I was little, my only recourse during nightmares [...]
To celebrate the 36th anniversary of Apollo 11, Google Maps has introduced "Google Moon," which displays the location of the Apollo landings on the moon, thanks to NASA giving them lunar satellite imagery. The funniest part is hinted at in the FAQ:
3. What happens if I try to zoom too close?
Well, you'll have to go [...]
I was a bit dismayed to see that none of the major American newspapers seem to be taking a look at the current famine in the African nation of Niger. Indeed, the top search for "Niger" on Google News right now refers to Karl Rove and the Valerie Plame investigation. Luckily, the British newspaper The [...]
In my opinion, one of the best albums in the entire world is Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Therefore, it is with some chagrin that I confess that I have never heard their previous album, On Avery Island. I have come close a number of times (it has been in my [...]
AIM Fight [via Waxy Links] is pretty cool, despite its Flash-based interface. I was a bit paranoid about entering my screenname at first (spim happens!), but was reassured after I read the "What is AIM Fight?" page ("Who made AIM Fight? Two AIM programmers with a little bit too much free time on their hands.") [...]
CDex is an open source application that rips CD audio to music files like MP3. M4A is a file format consisting of AAC audio data inside a MPEG4 container. It is supported by Apple's iTunes and the iPod. This is sort of a "note to self," since I have had to do this twice and [...]
I updated the Creative Commons license governing the use of this blog from the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 license to the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 license. I feel sort of guilty about using such a restrictive license, but I figure anyone who wants to use the contents of one of my entries in a commercial enterprise can jump through [...]
It has been almost a year since the fatal hostage situation in Beslan (see posts here and here). Only one of the hostage-takers, a young man named Nurpashi Kulayev, survived the storming of the school by Russian security forces. Both Slate and The Guardian are reporting on a suprisingly amount of sympathy given to him [...]
Last week, the Inquirer posted a letter in response to an article they wrote about Microsoft's claims that the next version of Windows (codenamed Longhorn, officially named Vista - at least for now) would have better performance than Windows XP. The letter, written by "snakeye" (a sketchy nickname, I know), claimed that Longhorn's (er, I [...]
In general, I like receiving comments, even the ones that do not praise me. They help me out when I am confused, and point me toward related information. What I do not like, however, is when commenters attempt to manipulate the assumed anonymity of commenting online to deceive both me and you, my readers.
Early this [...]
I sometimes wonder if my audience is divided. To put it simplistically, I imagine there are those who come here to read my complaints about Microsoft, and those who come to read my complaints about Bush. I sort of feel like Clifford Stoll in The Cuckoo's Egg, which tells the story of how a minor [...]
Tagged Apple, C#, COM, Cuckoo's Egg, Delphi, ITL, iTunes, Music, Personal, Programming, Python, SharpDevelop, Visual Studio
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The Haaretz RSS feeds give me the most trouble out of all of my RSS feeds. They have not been working for the last few weeks, since Haaretz implemented site registration. While it occurs to me that I suggested such a move (oops), it makes generating RSS feeds much more difficult (the Perl script would [...]
Kaspersky Lab's virus analysts report that they found a piece of malicious adware that was infected with Parite, another virus. They came to the conclusion that the computer used to make the adware was probably infected with Parite. Unlike most other modern viruses, Parite attaches itself to applications on your computers by appending its code [...]
BBC News has an article that is an excellent example of how localized crises can have international effects. Large numbers of red-billed Queleas (Quelea quelea), one of the most largest bird species in the world, have been attacking crops in northern Nigeria.
State and local officials say more than 8,000 hectares of crops - mainly millet [...]
I first came across John Vanderslice sometime during sophomore year looking for music about computers (you can stop that snickering now). The first song of his I heard was "Bill Gates Must Die." It is about computers (which is cool) but is also about child pornography (which is not cool). Despite the song's disturbing subject [...]
I was looking for a collection of free (preferably GPL-licensed) icons to use for a program I am developing. After some searching, I eventually found an article from Novell describing icons made by Ximian (a Novell subsidiary) for OpenOffice. However, the icons made by Ximian, like many icons in Linux, are in PNG format. Windows [...]
Among the links I came acrosswhile reading about iTunes and COM was a post by Sahil Malik, complaining about the lack of a sleep feature in iTunes similar to that on the iPod. The sleep feature on the iPod saves battery life by turning the player off if no music is playing and the buttons [...]
BBC News reports that John Garang, former leader of the rebels in the southern part of Sudan, is missing after his helicopter failed to return from Uganda. Garang's Sudan People's Liberation Movement recently concluded a peace treaty with the government in Khartoum that appointed Garang vice-president. Sudanese television had earlier reported that he had landed [...]