Monday, December 24, 2007

Credit problems


Unpaid credit cards bedevil Americans - Yahoo! News
Experts say these signs of the deterioration of finances of many households are partly a byproduct of the subprime mortgage crisis and could spell more trouble ahead for an already sputtering economy.

"Debt eventually leaks into other areas, whether it starts with the mortgage and goes to the credit card or vice versa," said Cliff Tan, a visiting scholar at Stanford University and an expert on credit risk. "We're starting to see leaks now."


Don't use credit cards as a bank! the interest rate will get you! I know a few friends that had this problem... one missed payment.... pow!

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Blackberry link to download facebook

http://www.blackberry.com/facebook/mobiledownload

I had a hard time finding the link to download facebook for the blackberry. you think you would be able to easily get it over the air(OTA.)

Traffic Gauge worth getting?

TrafficGauge Mobile Traffic Map of Los Angeles and Orange County

My wife drives through about 2 hours of traffic every day. It's the reality of living in LA. Most people I talk to in Los Angeles commute on average about 40 minutes a day. The traffic gauge provides real time wireless traffic. Price 80 to buy, then 10 bux a month for the subscription for real time traffic info. 

Thursday, December 13, 2007

test cat 2

testcat

 

where does the cat live?

live writer test!

funny pictures

Thursday, December 06, 2007

underground hackers


DailyTech - Study: Insight into Chinese Underground Hacking Economy
In all, the study claims that 1.49% of Chinese websites have malicious content within them. The study measures 145,000 of the most commonly visited Chinese websites and found that 2,149 of them contained malicious content. Each time a visitor to the websites containing malicious content visited that had certain software vulnerabilities in their browser or applications, the machine was compromised and some sort of malware was installed unbeknownst to the computer user. This kind of attack is known as drive-by-download-attack and the malware is typically a Trojan of some sort that harvests information and sends it to the attacker.

The study describes what it calls actors from the underground economy. The first actor is the Virus Writer, who has a certain degree of technical background allowing them to program viruses and zero day exploits. The virus writers are driven by profits says the study. On the underground market virus writers typically earn around the equivalent of $1.34 USD for the sell of Trojans they write.

A website master/cracker is the next player who attracts web traffic to a site with free goods like music or applications. These webmasters/crackers then sell the traffic to “envelope stealers” for around 40 -60 RMB ($4-$8 USD) per 10,000 visits. The envelope stealers attempt to harvest username and password combos for given sites, like online games. These envelope stealers then sell the harvested information to virtual asset stealers for tens of RMB, or around $1.35 USD. These players also sell access to infected computers for pennies to about $1.35 USD.

Virtual asset stealers buy the password, username combos from envelope sellers and then gain access to accounts in popular online games where they steal game assets like weapons and coins to sell for real world profits. What the study calls one QQ coin sells for about $0.70 USD. The final piece of the underground economy is the players who buy the stolen game goods. The study says these players are most often teenage males very into online games who spend their parent’s money.


apache deployments!


Indigio Blog - Colorado’s premier Interactive Agency blog - specializing in SEO, Creative Design, Development and Analytics » Blog Archive » Easier Production Releases
Set up an external dns entry for example.com and www.example.com (and the appropriate firewall rules to get port 80 of that IP to this apache box) and you now have a website that load balances over two separate clusters. You’re ready for a release during BUSINESS HOURS!

Choose a cluster to release to first and comment out all of its servers in the web-prod balancer. Run an apachectl graceful and you should then have no traffic going to that cluster. Shutdown the cluster, do your release thing, start up the cluster and then send QA off to test the cluster using the specific prod-a or prod-b.example.com url. Once QA confirms it’s good, uncomment the cluster from the web-prod balancer and comment out the other one. Fire off another graceful restart and repeat the release procedure on that cluster.

And *poof* you just rolled out a release with no downtime and very little impact to end users! Of course, this was just a very simple example. You can get much more detailed in your cluster design, especially with JBoss and different components. Just remember your individual clusters have to be completely separate. They can’t share any resources. Although, in all my experience they’ve always shared a database. You just need to make certain that any database updates the devs require you to make for the upgrade won’t cause the older release any harm.

This concept should work in most situations, just could take more planning/design/set up. I’ve got a similar set up running with 36 JBoss servers, 18 in each cluster. Quite a bit more had to be configured, especially to make sure that each individual cluster acts independently, and then there’s the SSL issues and sticky session requirements. But it’s so worth it though, and everyone will love you for cutting out the need for past midnight release “parties”.


I should set this up!

Monday, December 03, 2007

pooor kity


Cat survives 19 days with jar on head - Yahoo! News
BARTLETT, Tenn. - Tabitha Cain has fed a feral cat she calls Wild Oats for several years, but now she's thinking of changing the feline's name to Survivor.

That's because she says the cat survived for 19 days with a peanut butter jar stuck on its head.

"We tried to get her, but being the type of cat you can't catch, she kept running and hiding," said Doretha Cain, Tabitha's mother.

The family saw the cat several times with the jar on its head and tried in vain to catch it. But after not seeing the cat for a week, the Cains feared the worst.

"I thought she was going to die with that jar on her head," said Tabitha Cain, 25.

They found the once chubby cat on Wednesday, too thin and weak to flee. They caught her with a fishing net and used some oil to get the jar off her head.


Friday, November 30, 2007

dun buy that beagle


Our view on animal welfare: Beware of doggie in window - Yahoo! News
Under federal rules, a beagle could legally spend its life in a dishwasher-sized cage. Nor are there enough inspectors: 105 are charged with overseeing about 10,000 facilities, including kennels, zoos and research labs. High-volume operations that sell directly to the public don't need a federal license, and most state laws and enforcement are weak.

snogo i promise to be good


Fearing Divorce, Japanese Husbands Learn to Be Loving
Everything boiled down to the desire of wives to hear their husbands say "three magic phrases" more often: "Thank you," "Sorry," and "I love you".

Perched on a beer case serving as a makeshift podium in central Tokyo, a group of middle-aged Japanese men are standing up to save their marriages -- and, they hope, marriage in Japan generally. "I'm sorry I always forget to put the toilet seat down," said one man in a suit and tie confessed as he balanced on the beer box at Shimbashi, Tokyo's hub of "salaryman" corporate workers.

"I hereby declare that I will stop going to the hostess bar, I'm sorry," said another man as his wife looked on amid a crowd of curious bystanders.

Said another man: "I love you, even though I don't really say it."

In a country where reticence about one's private life is the norm, these men are trying to prove their worth to their wives by making their vows as public as possible.

The 20 men taking part in the unlikely rally chant their slogan together: "Say 'thank you' without hesitating. Say 'sorry' without being scared. Say 'I love you' without being shy."


hi snogo. i promise to put away the dishes every night.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

please give me my money


Lottery winner wasn't supposed to gamble - Yahoo! News
BOSTON - The winner of a $1 million lottery scratch ticket may not be so lucky after all: He's a convicted bank robber who isn't supposed to gamble. Timothy Elliott faces a Dec. 7 court hearing over whether he violated his probation when he bought the $10 ticket for the $800 Million Spectacular game at a supermarket in Hyannis.
ADVERTISEMENT

Elliott was placed on five years' probation after pleading guilty in October 2006 to unarmed robbery for a January 2006 heist at a bank on Cape Cod. Under terms of his probation, he "may not gamble, purchase lottery tickets or visit an establishment where gaming is conducted, including restaurants where Keno may be played."

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Please dress my doggie


Dog owners go barking mad for fancy dress - Yahoo! News
Sales soared by 300 percent over Halloween. Now costumiers have lined up a festive big seller -- the one-size-fits-all Santa pet hat for the dog determined to have a great Christmas.

"Some cynics would say the British love their dogs more than they do other people," said Benjamin Webb, spokesman for Angels Fancy Dress who have been supplying costumes for humans since 1840 and are now on a canine winning streak.


Wednesday, November 21, 2007

american eagle loses bags!


Travelers’ Odds Decline on Airline Baggage - New York Times
Counting together American and the regional airline it owns, American Eagle, mishandled bags rise to 8.69 for every thousand passengers, or a total of 639,146 through Sept. 30.

American Eagle had the worst bag-handling record of 20 airlines tracked by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics during that period, the agency reported.


lost luggage recovery!



Travelers’ Odds Decline on Airline Baggage - New York Times
“We never hit 100 percent — 90 percent is acceptable,” she said. Airlines are fond of saying that they have a success rate of more than 99 percent in getting luggage to its destination along with its owner. And every big airline has stepped up efforts to improve its operations. But the baggage problem is getting worse. One in every 138 checked bags was lost during the first nine months of this year, compared with one in 155 bags a year earlier.

Monday, November 19, 2007

free evdo!


Techcrunch
But Amazon must be taking a big hit up front on this. My Sprint EVDO data plan costs $60 a month. That is a consumer price. Obviously, Amazon was able to negotiate a much lower price. Even at $10 a month per Kindle, Amazon would need to sell a dozen books just to recoup its wireless network costs. Maybe it got a better deal than that, since the device is designed more for a download-and-read experience than an always-on experience. So the Kindles may not end up using a lot of bandwidth. It is not like most people are going to be downloading a new book everyday. If Amazon was able to negotiate the rate down closer to $1 a month, that would make more sense, because that would only require one or two book downloads per customer to pay for a year’s worth of wireless access. Amazon would not comment on how much it is paying for the wireless network. If it is paying Sprint on a per-device basis, it won’t really matter unless the Kindle takes off in sales.



The new device has evdo! this is great!

Saturday, November 17, 2007

To get mysql to autostart on startup


LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) HOWTO: Installing MySQL and Apache with PHP support on Linux
/sbin/chkconfig --level 3 mysql on



I had to use:

/sbin/chkconfig --level 3 mysqld on

instead

Friday, November 16, 2007

goodbye doogggie


Dog gives up life to save man from fire - Yahoo! News
CARTER LAKE, Iowa - Bryan Smith has pictures of his dog in his coat pocket, a reminder of the pet that sacrificed itself to save him from his burning house.
ADVERTISEMENT

It was Tuesday night when Storm jumped on the slumbering Smith and alerted him to the growing smoke and flames outside his bedroom.

Smith says he grabbed his curtains, wet them for a mask and grabbed his puppy Daisy while the older dog ran ahead.


Thursday, November 15, 2007

aiden gets his revenge


Popular NYC eatery shut down for rodents - Yahoo! News
While serendipity may be the art of finding pleasant things by chance, what health inspectors found at celebrated eatery Serendipity 3 was not very agreeable.
ADVERTISEMENT

Officials closed the restaurant Wednesday night after it failed its second inspection in a month. An inspector spotted a live mouse and mouse droppings, fruit flies, house flies and more than 100 live cockroaches.



send me videos!


TV sets a turnoff for South Korea's youth | CNET News.com
User-generated content sites such as "ipop" have clubs where users can pay by the download or pony up monthly subscription fees of about 10,000 won to 20,000 won ($11 to $22) that will let them tap into a huge library of U.S., Japanese, Chinese, and Korean TV programming and movies.

One of the most popular peer-to-peer clubs, Mansal, has had nearly 50 million visitors. While many are repeats, the total is still almost equal to the country's population.

"I like to download stuff because I don't have to wait to watch something" Seong-sun said.

The clubs make money from subscription fees and advertising. Young professionals with little time to spare and students with an abundance of time to search for material are the main clients for these services--making cable TV and TV sets obsolete.

Thursday, November 08, 2007

don't eat me


Polar Bears on Yahoo! News Photos

Dolphins rescue surfer from shark - People: Tales of survival - MSNBC.com
That attack shredded his back, literally peeling the skin back, he said, “like a banana peel.” But because Endris’ stomach was pressed to the surfboard, his intestines and internal organs were protected.

The third time, the shark tried to swallow Endris’ right leg, and he said that was actually a good thing, because the shark’s grip anchored him while he kicked the beast in the head and snout with his left leg until it let go.

The dolphins, which had been cavorting in the surf all along, showed up then. They circled him, keeping the shark at bay, and enabled Endris to get back on his board and catch a wave to the shore.

Our finned friends
No one knows why dolphins protect humans, but stories of the marine mammals rescuing humans go back to ancient Greece, according to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.

A year ago in New Zealand, the group reports, four lifeguards were saved from sharks in the same way Endris was — by dolphins forming a protective ring.



Wednesday, October 24, 2007

diamonds



Wis. man finds 3.92-ct white diamond - Yahoo! News
His fiancee Susan Gabrielson — who has "only one carat on her finger" — her daughter Sayde and Susan's sister Sarah accompanied Blake to the park this week. Susan found a 1.47-carat stone and some smaller gems Monday.

"We're going back out today. We'll take a lunch and then go back into the field," Blake said.

More than 700 diamonds have been found at the park this year.

The Crater of Diamonds park is the world's only diamond-producing site open to the public and visitors can keep the stones they dig up. The largest diamond ever found in the United States, the 40-carat white diamond named Uncle Sam, was unearthed in 1924 at the Murfreesboro park.


I need more bling for my ring!

Friday, October 19, 2007

Chore Wars



'Chore Wars,' where 'World of Warcraft' meets toilet cleaner | Tech news blog - CNET News.com
'Chore Wars,' where 'World of Warcraft' meets toilet cleaner
Posted by Michael Kanellos

SAN FRANCISCO--Housework is a lot more fun with a battle axe and a couple of dwarves.

Chore Wars, a game shown off by noted game developer Jane McGonigal at the Web 2.0 Summit recently, gives users "experience" points for various household chores. Collecting those points then lets you advance your profile in the online game.

Jane McGonigal

Jane McGonigal speaks at the Game Developers Conference held in San Francisco this past May.
(Credit: James Martin, CNET News.com)

Swiffer the floor twice a week and get 20 points for charm, that sort of thing. You can also play for virtual gold doubloons. These can be exchanged for rewards, inside your own circle of friends. Earn 200 doubloons and you can receive a get-out of-cleaning-the garage card. Or if you are the low scorer for a month, you can be dubbed a scapegoat and put up for adoption.

Naturally, most players concentrate on people you know. Who cares if some guy in Texas slew 200 yards of PVC pipe in putting together his new sprinkler system and got 1,000 doubloons. The bean bags in your guest room still need to be stacked. Still, you can get a sense of the value that other people put on certain tasks to get a sense of the value of your own.

There are different roles you can play--apprentice, dungeon master (DMs have full administrative power and get to wield the unstoppable cleansing power of Comet) and adventurer.


I hate it.

mags would be he dungeon master, and I would have to clean the toilets for 20 gold.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Bubble Blogger...



Real estate blogger taps into bursting market bubble
Every once in a while his two worlds - programming and blogging - collide. Time was, Killelea was best known as the author of "Web Performance Tuning," a geeky manual that helped him get jobs. Now his fame as a bubble blogger has spread - not always to his advantage. "Once a guy called me in for a job interview just to berate me," he said. "I don't do this language called Ruby that he wanted, so I said, 'Why did you bring me here?' He said, 'I want to talk to you about your Web site.' He complained about how he had overpaid for a house in Palo Alto and couldn't get out of it. It was not a civil conversation."


Sometimes I ping dennis and yell at him too stupid php and housing in mountain view!

Monday, September 17, 2007

I go buckwild


Man in China dies after three-day Internet session - Yahoo! News
A Chinese man dropped dead after playing Internet games for three consecutive days, state media said on Monday as China seeks to wean Internet addicts offline.
ADVERTISEMENT

The man from the southern boomtown of Guangzhou, aged about 30, died on Saturday after being rushed to the hospital from the Internet cafe, local authorities were quoted by the Beijing News as saying.



when my wife goes out of town, I go on a gaming binge. She usually gets back in 2 days, to prevent my death... the third day would kill me.


old doods younger chicks


May/December Couples Boost Human Lifespan - Yahoo! News
How it works

Women often lose their reproductive capacity around age 50, but if men can still reproduce into their 70s, Darwin would say it's advantageous for males to live longer lives providing they can hook up with a woman capable of reproducing. Natural selection should favor longevity-boosting genes, which would get passed down from fathers to both sons and daughters. So women would benefit as well in future generations, the scientists say.

Result: Over time, the older-guy-with-younger-gal lifestyle would lift the lifespan ceiling for both men and women in the next generations and so on.

"By increasing the survival of men you have a spillover effect on women because men pass their genes to children of both sexes," said study team member Cedric Puleston, a doctoral candidate at Stanford University.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

vacu seal my meat!


Tumble your way to tasty meat | Kitchen Gadgets - CNET Blogs
Tumble your way to tasty meat
Posted by Jennifer Guevin

Now even procrastinators can serve up tender, tasty meat as if they hadn't forgotten to start marinating until 10 minutes before their guests arrived.
Meat in barrel

The Reveo requires a surprisingly small amount of marinade. Mmmm...meat juice...
(Credit: Jennifer Guevin/CNET Networks)

I recently got to test out the Reveo MariVac from Eastman Outdoors, a funky kitchen appliance that looks suspiciously like a rock tumbler and that the company claims can cut down the time it takes to marinate meat to a fraction of the norm.

To use it, you just put raw meat and marinade into a compartment that tumbles it all together for up to 20 minutes. The idea behind the machine is that it vacuums out the air in the main barrel, stretching the fibers of the meat to allow the marinade to soak deeper into the meat in a shorter amount of time. All the while, the barrel turns, tumbling the meat and the marinade together in a messy bucket of flavor and goodness.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Thursday, August 16, 2007

dont eat my doggie


Councilor: Ship stray dogs to Korea - Yahoo! News
A soup with dog meat called boshintang is popular in Korea, especially on the three hot "dog days" of summer on the lunar calendar. The traditional belief is that dog meat helps boost stamina and virility, but activists regularly criticize the practice and call for bans on eating dog meat.


Please don't eat my doggie... bow wow

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Monday, August 06, 2007

hello kitty punishment


Bad Thai cops to endure Kitty shame - Yahoo! News
Police officers caught littering, parking in a prohibited area, or arriving late — among other misdemeanors — will be forced to stay in the division office and wear the armband all day, said Police Col. Pongpat Chayaphan. The officers won't wear the armband in public.

The striking armband features Hello Kitty sitting atop two hearts.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

jumbo squid


Voracious jumbo squid invade California - Yahoo! News
An aggressive predator, the Humboldt squid — or Dosidicus gigas — can change its eating habits to consume the food supply favored by tuna and sharks, its closest competitors, according to an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.


yummy

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

j2me 904 errors?

Are you getting j2me errors? This usually means that your cell phone decided to cache the jar file, while updating your jad file. Two possible solutions:

1. clear the history on your phone browser or power cycle the bastard.
2. update the jad/jar name. Stuff a random number param at the end of the jad/jar so that the phone doesnt update it
3. add this to your apache config file

LoadModule expires_module modules/mod_expires.so
.....
AddModule mod_expires.c
.....


ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType text/vnd.sun.j2me.app-descriptor "access plus 1 second"
ExpiresByType application/java-archive "access plus 1 second"

so sad

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

j2me woes


Java ME Mobile Phone Applications - Conclusions - www.shinetech.com
Conclusions

In this article I’ve explained the good, bad, and just plain ugly features of Java ME.

First, we saw that "the good” included:

* Core features for interacting with devices
* Easy to develop, and existing Java skills can be leveraged
* Wide ranging availability
* Package portability across different devices
* Deployment is trivial
* Tools are abundant and of an excellent caliber

Next, I explained how "the bad” concerned problems of API versioning and fragmentation, and the associated difficulties of configuring mobile phones for internet access. Finally, we saw how "the ugly” usually concerned the runtime environment (devices and carriers) and centered on security certificates, locked-out functionality and Java verification.

In my opinion the “good” of Java ME far outweighs both the bad and the ugly. There are alternatives to Java ME, but if you want to deliver robust applications to the widest possible mobile phone audience, it’s the best technology to go with. The Java ME community is active and exciting. Furthermore, it’s a technology that is both a de-facto standard and rewarding to work with.

Java ME – a little bit of bad, a touch of ugly, but mostly good.


Decent article summarizing the challenges of using j2me. I'll have to say that porting is a nightmare, especially when you are working on cutting edge work.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Opera 4 mini is good web browser for mobile phones. I’ve used it on a new prototype MOT q9 phone and 8830 black berry. It displays a website, exactly how you would see it on a computer. And it auto-zooms to the readable portions of the website, and the text is sized to fit on the screen perfectly. The text and images in the zoomed in portion are very readable on my blackberry 8830. However in the zoomed-out view, the view is too fuzzy to be useful. You can navigate if you know what you are looking for. Most phones are about 72 dpi, which contributes to the fuzzy screen. The iphone is much more useful in the zoomed out view because of the 140 DPI, and 480x640 screen.

You have be a bit careful though, the websites you visit are processed and read by a server hosted by the opera folks. I would not do any secure type of banking or ebay things with opera mini.

Watch this annoying video about iphone browser against opera mini.

http://www.operamini.com/beta/video/

Monday, July 09, 2007

Annoying blackberry j2me development notes

1. No left or right soft keys.
2. You cannot mix midlets and blackberry APIs.
3. Garbage collection causes hourglass to appear on the screen.
4. Track wheel on older blackberries go only up and down. Trackballs act normally.
5. Video implementation for MMAPI is crippled for video running from http URL.

2 billion Chinese mice overrun lake area - Yahoo! News
Now, an estimated 2 billion mice are ravaging crops in 22 counties around the lake, and authorities were rushing to construct walls and ditches to keep the rodents out. Residents have killed more than 2.3 million field mice — or 90 tons of the rodents, Xinhua said.

In Hunan province's Yiyang County, a ditch along the lakeshore was filled with mice. Residents were using clubs and shovels to beat them to death, while others scooped the furry animals out using fishing nets.


Ratatuillie goes crazy!

Friday, July 06, 2007

i hope there aren't any lines here!


China public restroom has 1,000 stalls - Yahoo! News
BEIJING - They're flush with pride in a southwestern Chinese city where a recently-opened porcelain palace features an Egyptian facade, soothing music and more than 1,000 toilets spread out over 32,290 square feet.
ADVERTISEMENT

Officials in Chongqing are preparing to submit an application to Guinness World Records to have the free four-story public bathroom listed as the world's largest, the state-run China Central Television reported Friday.


My wife would love this, then she wouldn't have to wait in line!

Monday, June 25, 2007

J2ME streaming.....



www.DrHu.org

J2ME Streaming is always a hot topic. How to implement streaming via HTTP protocal in GPRS?
Of course if the streaming media is not support partial data play (ex. midi sound), we can't do anything about it, right?
But how about if the media can play partial data (ex. arm sound), can we do it?
Here comes a wonderful J2ME application. Remember that we are not talking about RTSP/MMS, we are dealing with HTTP.
The idea is very simple. We open two thread, one thread is for download the data, the other thread is play the data that already downloaded so far.
Once the first chunk of data is available, we play it. When finished play the first chunk of data, we play the second available chunk of data, and so on.
If your mobile phone phone support two players, the play will be more smooth. The data is dynamically fetched into the next player.
Well you may ask "If finished play the first part of data and there is no second part data available which can be likely happened via airtime GPRS, what to do?",
just play the first part data again right!
Once the data is 100% downloaded, you can always replay again and again.
There is no need for special treatment of the host server that provide the media.
Yeah, you can play from any media server with this application.

Things to remember:
1) We assume that your mobile implemented the JSR 135 API getDuration and setMediaTime (tested on Motorola v188).
2) Download big size of streaming data may cost you a lot of money if it is not monthly service based on.
It is you own responsibility for the cost, not my application.
3) The application provided a demo, therefore try the demo first and let me know which device can play and what problem you have.
4) You can find what media is available now in my server here.
5) My contact email: drhu00@yahoo.com


This guy has a pretty good streaming ideas.....

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

i would eat it



Rare blue lobster avoids the cooker - Yahoo! News

The 1 1/2-pound clawed creature is bright blue, the result of an extremely rare genetic mutation.

It turned up Sunday morning in one of Hatch and Green's lobster traps at the mouth of the Thames River.

"I've heard about them but this is the first one I've ever seen," Hatch told The Day of New London newspaper.

Later that afternoon, he put the lobster in a cooler and brought it to the Mystic Aquarium and Institute for Exploration, where it will live out its days in an elementary school classroom for children to learn about.


I would eat this lobster. yummy....

Monday, June 04, 2007

AddType text/vnd.sun.j2me.app-descriptor .jad
AddType application/java-archive .jar


Header set "cache-control" "no-transform"


Add the code above so that Apache does not mangle your jad and jars.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007



Domo Arigato, Pass The Sashimi: Sushi Robots Will Destroy Us All, Make Delicious Sushi - Gizmodo

We're not sure this these sushi robots are for "home use," but who wouldn't want their own mechanical man making sushi for them? The various rice-ball-forming machines make anywhere from 850 balls an hour up to 1200 balls an hour, and the various parts of the sushi robot lineup make 2000 to 3000 pieces an hour.

Sounds pretty industrial/restaurant to us, but great if you like to have sushi every day of the week. Or really like robots. – Jason Chen


Tuesday, May 29, 2007

mysql longtext and seam

If you are working with seam and one of the columns in your tables is of the longtext type.

Make sure you set uncomment this line out inside your persistence-prod.xml



This will allow your EJB3s to deploy correctly when working with the long text type.

Monday, May 14, 2007

What makes the rich rich.....





What got them to the highest level? It isn't necessarily stock-market savvy: On average, folks who recently hit the $5 million mark report that only 10% of their money came through passive investments. And only 10% of pentamillionaires inherited their wealth. One might think that good fortune would play a role, but even luck is largely a matter of one's own making. Psychologist Richard Wiseman has found that people who describe themselves as lucky share common habits that account for their success: They're friendly and fond of new experiences, traits that put them on a collision course with new opportunities. In addition, "lucky" folks simply have higher expectations of success — they're too pigheadedly optimistic to heed the long odds and call it quits.

Not to say that getting rich is simply a matter of having a swell attitude. The path to riches usually involves the kind of risk that would make most people feel a little queasy. Harrison Group head Jim Taylor recently persuaded more than 3,000 pentamillionaires to discuss their path to success. Perhaps not surprisingly, none of them had a cushy union job down at the DMV. The vast majority — 80% — either started their own business or worked for a small company that saw explosive growth. And almost all of them made their fortune in a big lump sum after many years of effort.

Agile Offshoring



Agile Offshoring : It's hard work but it works!
Principle 14: Become a learning organization through relentless reflection ( Hansei ) and continuous improvement (kaizen)

This is the most important principle which has helped us reach where we are today, we do rigorous iteration evaluations for reflections of good things to preserve and areas of improvement to help us improve iteration on iteration.

We solicit constant and immediate client and team feedback so that the ultimate aim of the software is realized in an effective and efficient way.

Apart from this we made it a point to get to the root cause of any problem that we came across by asking “why” 5 times.

Conclusion

To conclude I would say that we are still learning. The lean production metaphor has been successfully applied to software offshoring but it can be improved. The Toyota principles when applied to software offshoring can make remarkable differences to the way software is being developed and offshored. We are trying to continuously improve and reach our goal of 'Whitebox Lean Agile Offshoring' in which transparency and quality are taken to the extreme.

As an advice for the offshoring industry, follow Scrum with the Toyota principles in spirit without diluting their essence. Apply them to your way of working and see the magic unfold.



Offshoring takes difficult executation. The overhead in communications for the distributed teams is difficult. The technical architecture needs be componentized so that distributed teams can work on seperate pieces without conflicting with one another. The software development processes need to be tailored for the offshore and onshore teams. Although offshoring is difficult, it can have numerous benifits if challenges can be overcome.

Friday, May 11, 2007

Mad Opportunity to short chinese stocks.....



China Stocks: Tick, Tick, Kaboom?: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

Further out, the introduction of a vibrant futures market--in which investors could make money shorting stocks ripe for a fall--would add more stability. Though Shanghai expects to introduce index futures sometime this year, market watchers say regulators are reluctant to launch them during such frothy times. The key thing, though, is for Beijing officialdom to understand the risk--a market crash would annihilate the finances of millions of Chinese households with big exposure to equities.

"The government should actively state that there is a bubble in China and the wording should come from senior Chinese Communist Party leaders," says Shaun Rein, managing director of the Shanghai-based China Market Research Group (CMR). "There are too many new investors coming into the market with glossy eyes expecting to make fortunes." In fact, some 368,000 brokerage accounts were opened on May 8 alone, according to the China Securities Depository and Clearing Corp.

Tuesday, May 08, 2007





Nasdaq 100 Leaders and Laggards: DISCA: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance
Amazon.com Inc. fell $2.41, or 3.8 percent, to $60.82.

Infosys Technologies Ltd. fell $1.98, or 3.7 percent, to $51.92 on a bad day for Indian technology companies. Investors sold on fears that a strengthening rupee could hurt profit margins at outsourcing companies.


Great fundamentals... but bit of bad news is drawing down this stock :(


Will the stock bounce back the resistance? It looks like it can go either way the 50 and 200 moving day average are going to cross.

Monday, May 07, 2007

Stock Chart AAPL




One of my favorite stocks is Apple(aapl)... Notice the new highs, when the market opens every day in the last five days.

Sunday, May 06, 2007

Do I need a new phone?

Blackberry, new treo, or samsung blackjack?


RIM BlackBerry Curve (aka BlackBerry 8300) Reviews. Smartphones Reviews by CNET.
Simply put, it was love at first sight. Though we don't fully understand the name--it's no curvier than the BlackBerry Pearl or any of the other latest BlackBerrys--the RIM BlackBerry Curve offers a best-of-breed design that beautifully combines a full QWERTY keyboard into a sleek and compact form factor. The silver-and-black color scheme is standard but attractive nonetheless. We'll admit there's a slight resemblance to the Palm Treo 680 from the front, but it's much thinner and more manageable in terms of size. In fact, it's the smallest and lightest full QWERTY BlackBerry to date at just 4.2x2.4x0.6 inches and 3.9 ounces. By comparison, the BlackBerry 8800 measures 4.4x2.6x0.5 inches and 4.7 ounces, while the Treo 680 measures 4.4x2.3x0.8 inches and 5.5 ounces.

RIM BlackBerry Curve


RIM BlackBerry Curve

















This is my stock screenshot... how does it look? :)

Friday, May 04, 2007

yummy frog juice



Frog juice in high demand in Peru - Yahoo! News
LIMA, Peru - Carmen Gonzalez plucks one of the 50 frogs from the aquarium at her bus stop restaurant, bangs it against tiles to kill it and then makes two incisions along its belly and peels off the skin as if husking corn.
ADVERTISEMENT

She's preparing frog juice, a beverage revered by some Andean cultures for having the power to cure asthma, bronchitis, sluggishness and a low sex drive. A drink of so-called "Peruvian Viagra" sells for about 90 cents.

Gonzalez adds three ladles of hot, white bean broth, two generous spoonfuls of honey, raw aloe vera plant and several tablespoons of maca — an Andean root also believed to boost stamina and sex drive — into a household blender.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Disney Princess Gowns



Disney offers princess gowns to brides - Yahoo! News
NEW YORK - So many brides say they want to look like a princess on their wedding day — and now we're about to find out if they mean really mean it.
ADVERTISEMENT

The Walt Disney Co. has teamed with bridal designer Kirstie Kelly to create a collection of gowns inspired by the favorite Disney princess characters, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Ariel from "The Little Mermaid," Belle from "Beauty and The Beast" and Jasmine from "Aladdin."


Mags, you cannot wear this around the apartment.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

6mbps down 600 up

Wowers!



So I moved into this new apartment 2 blocks up the street. Mags and I decided to upgrade our DSL.



We now get 5mbps! All this fancy ajax stuff isn't slow anymore! Now to see if my bittorrent stuff is any slower....









Wednesday, February 21, 2007

log4j.properties

Whenever you use log4j, make sure you stuff the log4j.properties inside your classpath. I always put the file inside the directory, but I forget to put it in the classpath. I then spend a hours wondering why nothing is being outputted into the logs.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Install Notify Errors for Motorola Phones

Be careful.... sometimes the url on the install notify for OTA is too long, and it will causes some motorola devices to reject the jad and jar.







Content Delivery [The Wireless FAQ]

906 Invalid descriptor Indicates that the device could not interpret the Download Descriptor. This typically means a syntactic error.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Nokia Cell Phones ignore the meta refresh....

For all you mobile wap developers...



The nokia phones like to ignore the meta-refresh tag.



 http-equiv="refresh" content="5" />

If you need do a long operation for a website like loading email or pulling up data for a report, this tag will be unreliable.



You will need to implement some sort of polling mechanism, where the user clicks on the link manually every 5 seconds to gather the information.



To go through a directory of log files and delete them on unix

for FILE in `find /home/evilsquid/logs -maxdepth 1 -mtime -1 -name *.log`

do

echo $FILE

rm $FILE

done



This is a useful tidbit if you need to do some log file monitoring....



Friday, February 16, 2007

Don't eat my kitty





Chinese animal rights victory takes cats off the menu | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited


Chinese animal rights victory takes cats off the menu


Jonathan Watts in Beijing
Tuesday February 13, 2007
The Guardian

China's nascent animal rights movement claimed a rare victory today after rescuing more than 400 cats that were about to be slaughtered for their fur and meat.

They were saved from a market in Tianjin after a standoff last week between 100 pet lovers and police which left one protester hospitalised.

Until recent years, respect for animal rights was almost non-existent in China, but the country's rising affluence has brought with it a pet-pampering middle class. Activists are becoming bolder, posting video footage of cruel treatment on YouTube and staging protests.

Article continues
In the latest confrontation, 100 supporters of the "Love Kitty" group in Tianjin surrounded a market, where cats and dogs were being slaughtered. Many of the protesters were local people who had lost their pets and suspected the animals had been abducted by furriers. The police refused to support the animal protection group because there is no law in China against killing cats and dogs, and all the animal traders were licensed.

Lu Di, director of the Small Animal Protection Association, said: "The demonstrators were afraid that the killings were continuing behind the closed doors so they made their way inside. They found cats crammed inside tiny wire cages about 10cm [4ins] high. About 80 police officers arrived and there were scuffles. One man suffered a head injury and is still in hospital."

To avoid further clashes, the Hebei provincial government allowed the cats to be taken to Ms Lu's shelter in Beijing. It has been difficult for her small, non-profit organisation to cope with so many mistreated animals.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Bow Wow





Mother cat adopts newborn Rottweiler - Yahoo! News

The tiny pup, named Charlie by Humane Society volunteers, nurses alongside a jumble of black and gray kittens recently born to Satin, who was taken to the shelter by an owner unable to care for her.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

how to get the imei for a nextel phone



Every Nextel phone has a unique number that identifies it. Depending on your phone model,
you will need to locate a SIM ID or an IMEI number.





SIM ID phones






















i30sx, i35s,
i50sx, i55sr, i58sr, i60c, i80s, i85s,
i88s, i90c, i95cl, i99cl, i205, i305,
i530, i730, i733, and 2004 NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series™ phones
1. In a quick sequence, press # * MENU right arrow on your phone's keypad
to pull up the Trace Mode menu.
2. Scroll down to IMEI/SIM ID and press the option button (•) under VIEW,
or press OK to display your IMEI and SIM ID.
3. Add a zero to the end of your SIM ID for the complete, 15-digit number.



stolen from





http://www.nextel.com/registration/wiz_info_imei-sim.shtml

Adding unix services on startup

As root run:



/sbin/chkconfig --add mysqld



then run



/sbin/chkconfig --list to check

Monday, January 08, 2007

Should I do it? Should I modify my old controllers to make a xbox 360 controller?

http://www.gamersreports.com/article/24/

Launching new blog

Hey folks!



I am launching a new blog at evil pufferfish.com!



please visit and click on links! Add a link on your blog please!

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Good Log4j documentation

This page here has good log4j documentation.



http://www.vipan.com/htdocs/log4jhelp.html



I usually do not need to modify my log4j.xml very often, but it's often pretty hard to find good documentation.



Monday, January 01, 2007

Happy New Year!

Happy new year everyone!



I'm amazed it's 2007 already. I am such a lucky person, my amigos and wife pitched in and got me a xbox 360!



Anyone on xbox live? what is your friendtag?





Happy new year!

Alert tabby saves family from fire

Timmy the tabby sprang into action by waking his unidentified owner when a mattress caught fire as the family slept early Friday in Cairns in Australia's tropical north.

"The cat was probably the best smoke alarm system ... it was clawing at the occupant's face and got him up and out of bed," Cairns fire service spokesman Robert White-Macfarlane told reporters.


Alert tabby saves family from fire

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