check back next week to see what new post looks like

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yesterday, may-ling and i have started our one month diet journey avoiding four legged animals. for those of you that failed kindergarden those include the likes of cows, pigs and lambs.

there are multiple reasons why we have decided to take such actions ranging from environmental to health. i’ld write about it if i didn’t have other work i’ld rather be doing (programming).

here is a quick list of items that would have made great blogs:

* my first CHI conference paper/video experience
* going to seattle and seeing bonsais and nintendo HQ
* moving eleith.com to the tomato
* my first startup, the labgrab (not really a startup)
* why ubuntu rocks the house
* emigrant bank

there is a bit more, but even writing that list was tiring. i am feeling tired because i feel always hungry now that my diet is mostly meatless (read: beefless).

i guess that is also a good way to describe this blog (beefless)…

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i am not going to apologize for not updating my blog. nor am i going to apologize for not having worthwhile content on here.

at least my todo list is seeing some un-static like behavior.

if i had the time, these are some topics i would like to write about:

* keith and his one month visit with me
* gas prices and why they should be even higher
* the possibility of individual sustainability
* the future of computers, brains and AI
* what i am working on this summer
* how to consistently write thoughtful blogs
* my DS Lite + 4 games

so…yeah….

sorry.

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email withdrawal is setting in slowly. the shaking and the sweating have stopped, but if I don’t get my fix soon……well, i rather not talk about it.

i don’t know why i insist on checking my email, when most of my time checking email is spent flushing my junk mail folder. it’s a nasty habit, and hopefully my week in canada will be proof enough that i am the one who is in control of email and not visa versa.

customs was pretty painless, although they still had fun at my expense. after finding out i was a full time student but i had not signed my passport, or filled out the customs card properly, she wiley stated "i guess you didn’t do your homework".

canada:     1
leith:          0

then it was time to find l’aerobus. i soon found out that l’aerobus is meant for seasoned travelers. the ticket booth for l’aerobus did not have the words l’aerobus on it anywhere. it merely said ‘tickets’ in a few languages. the ticket lady did not offer me information when i went up to the booth, she merely waited for me to state if i wanted a one-way or round-trip ticket. when i asked her for a map, she looked quite surprised.

apparently, no one ever asks for maps when flying first class with l’aerobus. she was not able to produce a map. luckily, may-ling had purchased a very kewl montreal guide for me. however, it did not have this particular bus route on it, so i was once again at the mercy of professionalism.

the bus took us to a greyhound station. this was certainly a surprise. we then transfered to a bus that was reminicisint of my party bus that a group of my friends rented out for our prom.

the driver was pleasant, and he actually took me straight to my hostel. finally, something ‘just worked’. I shouldn’t have such expectations though, flexibility is key.

Unfortunatley, the montreal hostel does not allow you to check in before 1:00pm, and apparently i don’t get a network key for the wireless network until i check in.

so from now until 1:00pm, i will be envisioning all the spam i could be deleting…

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i am going to canada! [eh]

björn’s advisor scott klemmer dropped me a quick note about a week ago that the mediaX had a graduate student fund that i could apply towards the chi ‘06 conference.

chi is to human computer interaction [hci] as E3 is to video games or mardi gras is to inebriated people.

i wrote up a three page proposal, and one week later i am planning a trip to canada!

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i am still here. still at stanford. and most importantly still alive. i have been taking it ‘E-Z’ this quarter.

for starts, i am working in a lab! i am helping out bjoern with his d.tools project in the hci [human computer interaction] lab.
project is challenging, interesting, and best of all, it will be used this year by students taking cs247.

the new admin site for this framework is coming along nicely. i have built from the ground up an entirely new javascript library! my hope is that i can finish the admin site by this summer, and then this winter, do a big round of maintenance and testing and actually open up my software to friends and family who want to host their own websites.

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the new site design is less of a change, and more of an evolution. think of my website crawling upon the shores for the first time and using its tail as a crutch to walk upon like a leg.

so i sit on my desk, and play with my slinky quite often [the stanford slinky]. may-ling got it for me from a google event she helped put on.

the slinky is an amusing toy. the swoosh-swish sound as you bounce it back and forth is hypnotizing. following the curve of each bend of metal is endless. yet, the true power of the slinky is to take your mind off the unnecessary stress that life forces upon us.

however, stress is a motivating factor in life. you can use it to push yourself beyond your original limits, and achieve great things. you can also do the opposite and cause yourself considerable pain.

surely the slinky understands this. haven’t you ever bent a round of the slinky, destroying the symmetry of the entire system. swoosh-swish-splack!

sometimes i feel like stanford’s slinky. it is surely stretching me farther than i am allowed to. my bones feel the strain. but stanford forgets the basic property of the slinky.

it bounces back. [or it breaks].

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I have always wanted to be able to work on the website without having to use the internet. In otherwords, unplugged.

Today is the day I finally made it happen. The real problem was not how to program for a webpage without using the internet. Actually, that was easily solved. I simply installed Suse Linux on my laptop and it is up and running as a webserver serving up php pages with a mysql backend all with the help of yast [yet another system tool].

The real problem was how to copy all the code from one project, make changes, and copy it back to the original project. Copying back and forth is quite time consuming and wasteful. Also, what if I introduce a new bug, and want to rollback the changes? You can’t do that unless you keep new copies and backups for each change I make. This would eat up diskspace faster than cookie monster eats…well…cookies.

What is needed is a way to keep track of only incremental changes made in the code. This way, if I have this website running on one computer, and another copy running on my laptop, I can make a change to one, and then only syncrhonize the changes. This more than likely involves adding or deleting a few lines of code.

Since only the changes are kept track of, it is very simple to keep track of a history of all changes ever made. Thus rolling back code to previous versions is a breeze!

This setup I am describing can be implemented in a few ways. The most popular way is by using cvs [concurrent versions system]. Basically you just define a repository where your initial code lies. Then you perform a ‘checkout’ which just creates a copy of the code anywhere you want. After you make a change to your copy and you want to check the code in, you perform a ‘commit’ on the files that were changed.

Now, onto the point of this blog. I decided to stray from the norm, and follow the best path rather than the most taken path. This usually entails greater benefits at the cost of larger impediments, but svn [subversion] made me ask why anyone would use cvs to begin with.

If you don’t trust my opinion, surely the svn homepage will sell you on why to choose svn over cvs. In the end, svn has the same features of cvs, but built for efficiency, ease of use and greater control [if you want it].

Continue on, if you want to learn how you too can get up and running with svn in a mere 11 minutes and 34 seconds!

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I come home last night to find the largest box ever to contain a nintendo game. [a surprise from may-ling] It was of course Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix. It was so big, it was covering up my monitor completely. If you knew what kind of monitor I had, you would surely agree, that this is one giant box.

I have only had it for one night, but I already have plenty to say about it.

It is Super Mario Fun.

After suffering for two years as I watched playstation and xbox get their DDR remixes, i vowed to never play a DDR machine until they made one for gamecube. I even went as far as signing a petition online making a similar statement.

What I got was even more, a completely nintendo-ized DDR that brings back to life all your favorite 8 bit music in remix form. Unfortunately, I have yet to hear any zelda music, but it has only been a day…

However, that does bring up another point, there is only so much song selection in this game, and noticeably missing are current hip hop and dance songs from today’s charts. Maybe Konami will release another DDR of original style on the gamecube with current dance songs, but I think they are too busy suing other companies from trying to expand the market with innovation in dancing games.

Anyhow, after countless years and hours of making my nintendo work for me, to the point where i have to actually stop playing because the nintendo is on the verge of overheating…my nintendo now gets me to work for it.

I warn you, the next time you see me, i might be one mean lean dancing machine…You provide the arrows, and I will provide the moves…

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People love my blog! At least every week, i get a wonderful comment about how great my latest article was, or how aesthetic my site looks. It’s a real booster.
It’s what keeps me coming back to my blog to write another post.

Unfortunately, my readers seem to have many problems. They seem to gamble quite a bit online at poker websites, while others are hooked on buying prescription drugs online.

They decide to share their problems with me, at a rate of about 6 times a week. It’s a bit unfair to all my newfound internet friends that they share so much of their joys of life with me, and I only talk about mundane subjects like linux, family and school. So today, i want to discuss a problem that I have: spam.

Now, spam can come in various flavors. The latest flavor of the month has been comment spam. Here are some common examples:


or



Now, these spammers are not very smart. In fact, some of them are just web robots, and it is a shame that a computer can be so dumb, but my comment module goes through an approval process. If I want to censor you, I can keep your comment from appearing on my blog. There is no freedom of speech here. Leave your bill of rights at the door. [hey, if the patriot act can do it, so can i]

Anyhow, I figured this process was enough to deter any viewers from wasting their time. Sending out email is one thing, you can hit 10 million viewers in one second, and even if only 50 people buy something, your profit margin is HUGE. However, when you comment on my blog, i delete it without even reading it. We both lose time and money.

Now, I could implement a captcha. A captcha is where there is an image of random letters displayed, and you are asked to enter the letters you see in the image. This is deployed in the hopes that only humans could see the image, and thus it would deter computers from spamming the form at hand.

However, this is highly inaccessible to those with poor vision, or who do not view images on websites. Also, most standard captchas have been broken by computers that can analyze the images, and decipher the message to a high degree of accuracy.

It is interesting to note, that for about a week, i got no spam at all. I was quite pleased, and accredited this success to the good karma that I deserve. However, when fixing some bugs on the site today, i realized my comment link was broken. No comment link = no spam. At least i know of one unsurmountable way to stop spam dead in its tracks.

Until I can think of a better way to do a captcha, i will have to be happy with deleting all and any spam that comes my way. Unfortunately, it has become quite difficult to tell apart my problematic friends from spammers. So, if you have a problem with online poker or you don’t know where to get viagra, and you comment on my blog, don’t be insulted that your comment does not appear on my website. It is a consequence of the new digital world with which we now live in.

Remember kids, spam is not just for dinner anymore.

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