Satya's blog - 2004/02/

Feb 26 2004 21:22 Thief of Time: Mandala
pterry mentions something called a "Mandala", which sounds a lot like the Hindi/Marathi word "Mandal". The way he describes it, it sounds like a computer that re-caculates the universe... much like the computer described at http://www.disenchanted.com/dis/technology/strange-attractor.html (referenced at 2004/02/24#strangeattractor ).

Tag: book

Feb 26 2004 20:44 Thief of Time and Matrix
I'm reading Terry Pratchett's _Thief of Time_ in which he writes: "Here are people that know that there /is/ no steel, only the idea of steel." It's footnoted with this: "But they still use forks, or, at least, the /idea/ of forks. There may, as the philosopher says, be no spoon, although this begs the question of why there is the idea of soup."

That's a clear _Matrix_ reference. Also note that "begs the question" is used incorrectly.

Tag: book

Feb 25 2004 11:30 Crazy
Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Goblet in Azkaban's Chamber of Secrets.

I need sleep.

Tag: silly

Feb 24 2004 19:46 Interesting reading
This is the sort of thing I used to read sometimes:
http://www.disenchanted.com/dis/technology/strange-attractor.html

Tag: link

Feb 24 2004 19:44 Common english errors

Tag: link

Feb 24 2004 14:24 Grow
This is addictive: http://page.freett.com/eyezmaze/index.html

And the correct order (ROT13) is: fha oybpx zbhagnva rtt ynqqre cvcr ebgbe uheevpnar trnef qvfu ebpxrg fperra

Tag: web_game link

Feb 23 2004 16:13 Flash games
Pretty good flash games around. The best is MOTAS[0], and Takagism[1] is just frustrating.

[0] http://www.albartus.com/motas/
[1] http://www.datacraft.co.jp/takagism/index_e.html

Tag: link web_game

Feb 20 2004 22:25 Netstat explained
All those ports are actually listening on 0.0.0.0 but the hosts file maps www.doubleclick.net (and others) to 0.0.0.0 and the OS happily looks up the hostname. Grr.

And XP happily hides the hosts file deep inside windows\system32\drivers\etc.

I still want to know why XP is listening on all these ports.

Tag: tech

Feb 20 2004 22:13 Interesting netstat
So I run netstat on wintermutex, and see a couple of suspicious connections. Okay, they're all suspicious -- doubleclick.net? WTF? Anyway, one of them connects to code -- the main department web server at work. After a few minutes, I realised duh! it's also the jabber server.

That still leaves the connection to h183n2fls32o841.telia.com . Anyone know what that's about? And this:
TCP wintermutex:1067 localhost:1068 ESTABLISHED
TCP wintermutex:1068 localhost:1067 ESTABLISHED
TCP wintermutex:ftp-data www.doubleclick.net:0 LISTENING
TCP wintermutex:ftp www.doubleclick.net:0 LISTENING

WTF?

Tag: tech

Feb 20 2004 13:04 Spolsky on interviewing programmers
Spolsky on interviewing programmers: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000073.html . I don't agree with all of it, but most of it makes sense. The ITLab didn't use any of this.

Tag: tech work

Feb 17 2004 12:13 The Fifth Elephant
I'm reading Terry Pratchett's The Fifth Elephant[0] and Leonard of Quirm (apparently => Leonardo da Vinci, which makes Quirm=>Italy I suppose) has invented Espresso machines. And the Enigma device.[0] Only he doesn't call them by their regular names, and ... well, it's funny.

You had to be there.

Um.


[0] Not going to link it. Go look at Google.

Tag: book

Feb 17 2004 12:00 L.A. Trip
We went to L.A. for two days. Left on Saturday, returned Monday. Drove around PCH and Sunset, looked at USC, went to the Hollywood Wax Museum. Saw a New Zealand airlines aircraft at LAX -- with a big Lord of the Rings mural on the side, including pictures of Aragorn and Legolas. Sheesh! At least the return flights were all on schedule. The Charlotte-LAX flight departed two hours late because we had to wait for the LAX-Charlotte flight to get in due to aircraft trouble.

Tag: travel

Feb 07 2004 19:12 Sluice Fanta
This week's meme at the ITLab[0] is Fanta Shokata[1]. So here's mine, based on Sluice:
http://www.fanta.dk/showmovie.asp?mid=501A0434-381A-47F5-BF13-E09F0CE90DA5

[0] http://www.itlab.musc.edu
[1] http://www.fanta.dk/

Tag: silly

Feb 06 2004 20:33 Mars rovers have blogs
Even the Mars rovers, _Spirit_ and _Opportunity_, have blogs: http://www.livejournal.com/users/spiritrover/ and http://www.livejournal.com/users/opportunitygrrl/. I didn't know NASA's rovers had personality! _Opportunity_ is female, apparently.

Tag: silly link

Feb 06 2004 15:45 PHP has too many functions
PHP has too many functions. I was looking for ways to tell if a file is a symlink, and it turns out there is a function called filetype(), which returns the file type: link, file, dir, etc. Turns out there are functions like is_link(), is_file, too. That's just crazy.

Tag: tech

Feb 02 2004 19:33 Ctrl key
The left Ctrl key on my keyboard has been feeling extra "clicky", hard, and generally "ugh" all day. It doesn't quite contact sometimes. So I popped it off, and found a piece of plastic wedged under it. Took that out and it's fine. Yay! Time to clean the keyboard.

In the meantime, this DIP program refuses to work! It's either me or the mail server, and it's not me.

Tag: tech