tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082777836989045192012-01-14T11:41:59.458-05:00Gadgets, Linux, DIY, and MoreAlec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.comBlogger561100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-67478668881269089712009-03-01T22:58:00.002-05:002009-03-01T23:17:40.096-05:00

Intro: I was surprised to discover just how difficult it was to successfully make a video slideshow in Ubuntu. This is really just a matter of package dependencies not being made explicit.1. In your terminal, type:sudo apt-get install imagemagick mjpegtools music123 ffmpeg digikamOr, if you prefer, install the 5 packages in Synaptic.(1.5 If you only install digiKam, it will not be able to

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-38197670846495385422009-02-05T12:55:00.002-05:002009-02-05T13:01:32.493-05:00

This may sound silly, but I was initially disappointed that Google Documents didn't let you create new documents while using offline mode. It's been said that this feature will eventually be implemented, but there's a really obvious fix in the meantime:Simply create one or more "blank" documents ahead of time. When you want to create a new document in offline mode, just edit one of these

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-2855358678598253672009-01-17T10:53:00.005-05:002009-01-17T11:09:15.896-05:00

It's hard to understand my father. On top of his regular psychosis, he also is disadvantaged when it comes to present giving. He never really understood the old adage: "It's the thought that counts." Instead, he compulsively buys random items like dolls and candy; anything as long as its at a discounted price, and give them away as presents. This year, however, my father truly outdid himself.

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-83267786802661451912009-01-13T11:35:00.010-05:002009-01-13T16:59:48.484-05:00

I wanted my forum users to be able to upload mp3's and have a little flash player show up so that other users could stream them directly from the site (see screenshot).After a few hours of scouring forums and googling, it seemed that nobody had the solution I wanted (just a bunch of less appealing alternatives). So, even though I don't know javascript or php, I managed to put together this

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-64873682969654729372008-11-26T12:39:00.002-05:002008-11-26T12:40:04.485-05:00

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-85835331760730360862008-11-04T18:48:00.011-05:002008-11-04T18:57:10.533-05:00

Every time your candidate wins a state, take a drink.Every time your opposing candidate wins a state, take two drinks.If your broadcast station states false information (and corrects themselves), take a drink.If the commentator brings up technical problems at polls, take a drink.If you're still sober at the end of the night, something went terribly wrong. Take four drinks.

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-4909744263629257332008-10-28T15:34:00.001-04:002008-10-28T15:34:56.509-04:00

Gmail, Gdocs, Maps, Gcal, Youtube, Groups, Picasa, and many, many more. With the list of web services offered by Google growing every day, it seems appropriate to take a(n entirely satirical) look at the untouched realms Google has yet to tap into.Having a bad day? Select "Grouchy" from the drop down menu and everyone will know to stay clear. GTalk will make your status into a "stay away" message

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-87130957846531384602008-10-24T09:43:00.004-04:002008-10-24T09:52:17.950-04:00

With Ubuntu 8.10 just around the corner, I'm reflecting on some lessons learned from previous upgrades.  My hope is that new ubuntu users will be benefit.1.  There's no rush.  I know, you're practically salivating at the thought of all those new built in features.  But remember, you have a working system now, and in fact you like it a lot.  It will still be there in a few weeks, about the time

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-81183548455838259672008-09-25T16:13:00.008-04:002008-09-25T16:21:57.386-04:00

[Edit]: I have since had luck accessing twitter. An odd fluke.Twitter.com and related services appear to be having some technical difficulties this afternoon. I was getting some odd errors from my firefox extension (TwitterBar) and on my blog that shows current twitter status. I decided to go to the main URL and this is what I found:Not entirely convinced, I tried downforeveryoneorjustme and

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-73483304473414604682008-09-23T17:58:00.004-04:002008-09-23T18:04:35.688-04:00

Here we have a chart that displays some disturbing figures. These figures were taken from the Budget of the U.S. Government. Every year we spend about a half trillion dollars developing our war machine. Our combined budgets for education and energy fail to make up even 10% of our Defense budget.

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-29332695393406338882008-09-23T15:20:00.004-04:002008-09-23T15:24:55.409-04:00

Here are a few charts I've put together to explain some of the subtleties in my relationship with internet access. The first one here is a bit more qualitative. I'm sure you can relate, however.I hope that this information will prove useful for your own self-analysis.

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-76621569295423809592008-09-20T18:30:00.004-04:002008-09-20T19:22:18.880-04:00

If you've found this post, I sympathize for you. This means that you, like myself, have been searching for a seamless way to transfer all of your various Google services from one account to another. The unfortunate news is that there is no such easy transition, but at least I can tell you what you're in for.Perhaps you have decided that the email address you chose when you were 14 is no longer

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-7640332543804404442008-09-20T16:19:00.004-04:002008-09-20T18:28:28.758-04:00

It has long been the burden of men to leave the toilet seat down after going #1, so that women do not have to move it every time they use the throne. However, we are well into the 21st century and I think it's time for more toilet seat equality. This gentleman breaks down the problem pretty well.There are several different goals:Reduce the overall number of times the seat must "move

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-27539221313571325432008-09-17T21:43:00.010-04:002008-09-18T08:09:50.092-04:00

Even without all those personal documents, the philosophical differences are very apparent. Guess that's what happens when you purchase your operating system from a giant corporation bent on squeezing every last penny out of you.

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-20921561726076564982008-09-17T07:55:00.003-04:002008-09-17T08:42:17.237-04:00

For the tech-savvy and webapp oriented, Ubiquity seems like a great direction. Every Ubiquity command is like having a command line interface for your favorite web services. I've browsed through the herd and found a few that are either very useful, interface with webapps I like, or otherwise show a lot of promise.(note: I have intentionally left out most "search" verbs, as I find they are

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-12869280501220636452008-08-29T00:11:00.003-04:002008-08-29T00:15:03.959-04:00

That's right: humans are nothing more than ugly pickles until we tap into the lethal voltage of God. When humans become Christians, they too will steam and bleed their juices uncontrollably.

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-13911394088757176162008-08-26T14:33:00.002-04:002008-08-26T14:34:32.908-04:00

I saw these signs in the back of somebody's driveway. I don't know if it's still homeless tea time or not.

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-63422703058554217262008-08-25T12:12:00.003-04:002008-08-25T13:52:09.334-04:00

As some of you may know, I am a college student. Being a college student, but not having any real money, you could then conclude that I take out a fair amount of student loans (so that I can be owned by the system indefinitely, but whatever). Your assumptions would be correct.Recently I applied for a new student loan with SallieMae. While I'm happy with what they offer, their online process of

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-31705335053691376352008-08-22T14:04:00.002-04:002008-08-22T14:19:20.622-04:00

In light of the FCC's brief moment of enlightenment, whereby they ruled Comcast could no longer throttle bandwidth based on protocol (such as bittorrenting), I feel the need to take a moment to respond. In particular, I would like to respond to Comcasts backup plan to manage internet traffic. Comcast has announced a preliminary plan whereby "heavy bandwidth users" will have their connections

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-48691123985764448622008-07-22T18:57:00.004-04:002008-07-22T20:49:29.473-04:00

Everyday I'm bombarded with invites from ridiculous Facebook applications. Most of these are nothing more than passing around cartoon images, people trying to find out who has a crush on them, or ridiculous "political" applications that don't do anything to help their causes.Regardless, I wanted to highlight the few but useful or entertaining Facebook applications that I happen to use. There

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-4382166920550022172008-07-14T15:06:00.006-04:002008-07-24T18:08:44.510-04:00

[Update] For the past few weeks The Pirate Bay has had occasional downtime. In a recent blog entry, they referenced trouble with hardware and backup systems not kicking in when they were supposed to. The outages have been occurring about once or twice a week, but not normally more than six to ten hours at a time.

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com39tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-52860772307650543482008-05-28T12:00:00.003-04:002008-05-28T12:24:12.562-04:00

Many people enjoy Lucid Dreaming as a hobby, or as a method of self exploration. While there is no guaranteed method to achieve regular lucid dreaming, there are some steps you can take to increase those chances. Here are some bullet points.* Don't wake to an alarm. Alarm clocks prevent good dream recollection, which is considered to be very important towards inducing lucid dreaming. If your

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-60373654696148855442008-05-23T10:48:00.002-04:002008-05-23T10:55:59.503-04:00

I was playing around in GIMP the other day and decided to whip up a new Gnome icon for Python. I think the blue and yellow icon is rather ugly, and short of finding something satisfying on the web, I decided to make my own.You can download the xpm file here.

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-58525948851429991982008-05-22T21:57:00.003-04:002008-09-18T08:06:30.656-04:00

I've found this to be a handy little charging device. I will break down my experiences quite simply into advantages and disadvantages.Pro: The battery 'pods' are useful to grab off of the stand and throw in my backpack. It seems to charge the batteries at a good pace. The "vertical" design saves some desk space. The light indicators are helpful.Cons: The 'pods' are rather delicate. The hinge

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-8556444414363950752008-05-22T11:23:00.003-04:002008-05-22T11:33:53.770-04:00

There appears to be a bug with a combination of Firefox, pulseaudio, and the libflashsupport packages in Ubuntu Hardy Heron. This causes sites with flash to sometimes cause the browser window to close. The temporary solution here is to remove the "libflashsupport"package.This will only help if your sound card supports mixing, as it will default to ALSA instead of pulseaudio. If this is not

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-42262299078219203072008-05-20T11:24:00.006-04:002008-05-20T20:13:19.979-04:00

Gnome-Do is a handy little application for quickly launching applications or documents:If you've tried installing it in Ubuntu, you may have run into problems with huge CPU usage and/or the application doesn't open. These are the telltale signs of an infinite loop [edit] but I'm informed that this is not the case. This is almost certainly because of the amarok plugin that is available in the

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-45727782627706149942008-05-14T10:50:00.005-04:002008-05-14T11:02:22.003-04:00

If you recently upgraded to Hardy Heron, you might have been a little surprised when you went to upload some photos from your digital camera. For Ubuntu 8.04, F-Spot has become the default image application. While this program is supposed to be more comprehensive than gthumb, I simply don't like it as much.gThumb is lightweight, created folders based on the date and time of importing, and has

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-41689069842553342272008-05-02T19:30:00.006-04:002008-05-10T10:32:41.797-04:00

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-24268079516837557892008-04-12T16:29:00.003-04:002008-04-12T17:01:52.905-04:00

It's the monthly Open Mic on an unassuming campus in rural southern Vermont. There's some scattered chairs and tables, and no more than fifty people in the room at any given time. Next up on the list is apparently a local celebrity. The MC refers to her as the college's own "Queen of Open Mic," and I'd have to say I agree. A shy young woman takes the stage with her guitar and waits for the

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-19848315320656034392008-04-01T08:32:00.003-04:002008-04-01T08:38:01.226-04:00

"Be on time. Every time" This is the theme for GMail's new April fool's feature which let's users set a time, say, in the past, for an e-mail to have been sent. Missed a birthday? No problem, with GMail's new custom time feature!

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-49635947418256440372008-03-18T23:46:00.003-04:002008-03-19T00:02:57.488-04:00

There are many tools out there that purport to simplifying photo geotagging for Windows, Mac, or linux setups. However, most of these utilities are designed to take tracklogs and synchronize them with photos that were taken with certain timestamps. For someone that doesn't have their camera set up this way, or who doesn't want to leave their gps on unless they are marking the waypoint of a

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-31352007790405970622008-03-18T23:14:00.004-04:002008-03-18T23:40:00.616-04:00

My hometown is Nashua, NH. Apart from the large coke rings, stabbings, and newly thriving gangs, there's some valuable urban culture brewing on the inside. These are just some shots of stickers, and a single wall piece done not far from my house.If anyone can identify the stickers, I realize some of them may just be commercial skateboarding stickers or something, just send me a line.This was in

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-20989744093660394292008-02-10T22:05:00.000-05:002008-02-10T22:14:00.912-05:00

After an in-depth internet search, I had failed to find a device which would take those red, white, and yellow composite cables and output to either a VGA or DVI monitor connection. I had begun to think that it wouldn't work right and so no one had bothered.Nonsense! It wasn't until I had physically seen one in a college campus common room that I discovered just such a device. It is called the

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-47927571695032598072008-01-29T12:09:00.000-05:002008-01-29T12:21:27.928-05:00

The sheer number of news articles about delayed shipments for OLPC XO laptops in the U.S. is somewhat sickening. Simply, I do not understand what all the fuss is about. The fear is overblown, for one thing; lots of people have received their machines on time. Secondly, this is not a product that was originally even going to be available to developed nations because it is not intended for them

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-54832887070337757412007-12-31T19:09:00.000-05:002007-12-31T19:22:37.045-05:00

Maybe you're a granola munchin' hippy from Vermont, or perhaps some mid-fifties couple who lives in suburban Massachusetts and listens to a lot of NPR. Regardless of your background, you've already decided that one of those trendy Subaru wagons is what your heart desires. Personally, I commend you. I just purchased an Outback Legacy with my partner, and it already proved its usefulness in our

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-37899302842048118812007-12-16T17:24:00.000-05:002007-12-16T17:28:16.746-05:00

If you're experiencing inexplicable duplicates in Linux, I may have a solution. Even if you have each folder listed only once in the "watched folders" section of the Picasa folder manager, it will follow Linked folders as if they are a unique path. Simply deselect the linked folders and you should be alright.

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-35078747339134852442007-12-14T17:11:00.000-05:002007-12-14T17:13:27.506-05:00

I don't normally post media on my blog, but I StumbleUponed this really neat video of a Paul Dateh and his violin skills. Please enjoy.

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-38173462722245881252007-11-30T11:03:00.000-05:002007-11-30T11:26:41.445-05:00

My search was for a reliable, used digital camera that had at least 6 megapixels and 4x optical zoom. First I consulted friends about their own digital cameras and I discovered an incredible consistency in the number of Canon PowerShot owners who were satisfied with their camera. With that knowledge in mind, I hit up Ebay. What I found there, was that I could get an older PowerShot in the 7

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-4942356929494307782007-11-20T10:38:00.000-05:002008-01-03T21:54:54.848-05:00

I've been using the Fluxbuntu Release Candidate for the past week on an old IBM 240 Thinkpad. My system has a 366Mhz Intel and an upgraded 196MB of RAM. The Fluxbuntu distribution aims to be a way to get the user-friendliness of Ubuntu, but runs lighter by using the Fluxbox Window Manager and a selectively picked default package list. Before listing my complaints, here are some things that

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-45923130717047094582007-11-14T22:15:00.000-05:002007-11-14T22:23:28.395-05:00

I just watched a great webcast on SemanticFocus.com regarding opensource project Protege. The software enables a very powerful ontology editor with relative ease of use and a wide array of functionality.I highly recommend you download it and give it a whirl.

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-48850289505316018632007-11-10T16:16:00.001-05:002007-11-12T17:13:38.224-05:00

Below are very rough summaries of ToDo list web applications that I've found, listed in the order of which I prefer them. Todoist and Remember the Milk rise above the rest, either for their features or the intelligence of their user-interface. I hope you find these descriptions and screenshots helpful.Todoist: In my humble opinion, Todoist does things a little better. You have the normal

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-20478540257835980762007-11-08T21:10:00.000-05:002007-11-08T21:24:01.689-05:00

I've spent a lot of time the past week trying out a lot of different "Web 2.0" enterprises, both new and old (my sincerest apologies for using the phrase web 2.0). Bookmarking was one of the services I decided to change websites for. More specifically, I moved from Del.icio.us to Netvouz. Netvouz simply has more functionality. Here are a few small examples:* Netvouz has a folder system in

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-27801344049865120332007-10-28T22:18:00.000-04:002007-10-28T22:22:49.784-04:00

Looking for a "productive" way to waste time? Want to contribute to the unending task of tagging everything on the internet? Please check out the Google Image Labeler:http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/You are matched up with a partner for two minutes. During the two minutes, you are shown a series of photos which need more tags, if the two of you enter the same tag then it gets added and

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-86728928389333237862007-10-28T12:37:00.000-04:002007-10-28T12:39:45.825-04:00

After several weeks, Google's spider finally picked me up. It's very gratifying to see your articles show up on a Google search.

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-57796189312648428422007-10-26T20:18:00.000-04:002007-10-26T20:45:30.146-04:00

In a previous post I researched options for a lightweight, small, simple piece of hardware that I could set up as a portable programming environment. Based on what i determined to be the top contenders, and what was available on Ebay, I went with an IBM Thinkpad 240. I'm happy with the hardware, as it all appears to be working.The problem? Windows 2000 is installed on the hard drive, and I do

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-12475532911535008652007-10-21T16:47:00.000-04:002007-10-21T17:42:04.571-04:00

Google announced that their copyright identification software for YouTube is open to beta testing right now. Described here, this software is supposed to allow copyright holders to accurately locate if their material is being used and whether they want it removed or to generate revenue from it. The technology employs a way to scan video and sound content and match it to digital samples hosted

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-38381788625808781522007-10-16T23:40:00.000-04:002007-10-21T02:48:19.922-04:00

For people who want to run Common-lisp inside an Emacs buffer, there's this wonderful CVS package known as SLIME. If you have Ubuntu, you can select and install the package through Synaptic Package Manager. Typically installing packages from repositories is a click and play experience, but you'll find that having emacs (or Emacs GTK Snapshot in my case) and SLIME installed isn't quite enough.

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-75606822058845790102007-10-16T00:29:00.000-04:002007-10-16T10:53:46.379-04:00

If you're a StumbleUpon addict, such as myself, I have a recommendation for you. While using StumbleUpon as a passive experience, ie: "just click the button", is a favorite pastime, try entering in a keyword search. Given some testing the past few days, I have found numerous sites which I'm glad I've found, but which never pop up given regular stumbling.This has to do with the way that the

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-9136999512115611222007-10-15T22:09:00.000-04:002007-10-15T22:21:31.115-04:00

A friend of mine introduced me to this technique. It's very simple, but works and goes as follows:* Have a timer or regular clock in front of you. * Set up your workstation to do your homework, programming, writing, etc. * Take note of the time, and for only five minutes focus on your work or the task at hand. * After those five minutes, you can stop and take a five minute break. * Then work for

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-74189169943551288132007-10-15T15:59:00.000-04:002007-10-22T23:40:49.550-04:00

It recently came to my attention that my GMail storage space got boosted from roughly 2.9GB to 3.35GB since yesterday. I was curious, and logged out of GMail to see the "Lots of Space" counter on the login page. Sure enough, if you look at the counter you can see that it's gaining about a Megabyte every 10 minutes.I can't verify, but that seems a bit faster than usual. Perhaps they just recently

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-44249766202545182522007-10-13T18:28:00.000-04:002007-10-13T18:36:13.237-04:00

I found this on JetsonGreen. This gentleman thought of a way to capture wind energy without the use of a rotor or turbine. Shawn Fayne, the inventor of this creative approach, won the 2007 Breakthrough Award given out by Popular Mechanics. What's incredible about this approach to wind power generation is its efficiency compared to micro-turbines (10-30 percent increase), its materials are

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-40184858873705714092007-10-12T11:02:00.000-04:002007-10-12T14:21:41.426-04:00

Find them here.Do they work? Simple answer: no. Complex answer: Maybe, if you run 64bit linux and if you want to put a lot of work into it. If you're going to try them regardless, you might find some help in the current Feedback thread:Current thread on Driver FeedbackIf you're a Debian/Ubuntu user such as myself, there's an excellent script patcher here: http://blackbox.lostwave.net/x-fi/

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-12977312318146785252007-10-11T19:59:00.000-04:002007-10-11T20:05:35.240-04:00

Much like XKCD's map of Online Communities, I found this period table amusing.

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-86507724157116187332007-10-11T15:35:00.000-04:002007-10-18T11:47:58.116-04:00

I've been trying to meet a very specific need, and surprised at the electronic industry's inability to quench my consumerist thirst. I've been looking for a highly-portable, not very powerful device to carry around programming environments such as Lisp and Python, with a usable Qwerty keyboard (thumb-typing is not my thing). I am not looking for something to play movies or listen to music, and

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-83783450577670268462007-09-27T21:46:00.000-04:002007-10-12T10:58:57.505-04:00

It was a progressive day for Alec's general linux knowledgebase. Today I finally got my distribution of lisp (clisp) to work as a shell within emacs in collaboration with slime. This is a huge boon concerning my ability to program efficiently in lisp. Something rubs me the wrong way if I have my file editor running in an entirely separate window from the terminal clisp is running in.Secondly,

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-67790865905035264372007-09-17T10:29:00.000-04:002007-10-15T22:02:07.750-04:00

Apple is by no means the epitome of functionality. It has always been clear that Apple has viewed the PC market as "consumers are idiots, give them cute graphics to look at." Actually, it's a proud lineage of nonconformity to ISO standards and proprietary hardware. They really like reinventing the wheel so that they can selfishly retain an ignorant consumer base.Nowadays, certain standards

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0