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April 13th, 2010
11:08 am - LJ free accounts and Chinese spammers
Some of my past entries apparently have a high page rank for query terms spammers find desirable.
After two comments by spammers in the PRC selling "cheap Jordans," I decided I would change all my past posts so comments from non-friends would be screened. But you can't do that in a batch manner on a free account. You have to find each individual entry and edit its settings.
So LJ seems to be attempting to monetize the user who doesn't want spam to be delivered via LJ. Screw that, maybe I'll just let the spammers in next time.
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January 9th, 2009
06:19 pm - A kind of ambient I'm not into
Why do you suppose American drivers generally crank the dashboard illumination in their cars to the max? Don't they like to see at night?
Is it because the rental car companies do that as part of the prep? Because, they also seem to crank the bass and treble to the max on the stereo too, and I don't think that's such a hot idea either.
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November 28th, 2008
12:58 pm - Next up: red-black trees
While playing a number guessing game with my 5 year old son today, I ended up teaching him bsearch as a way to play when the number range is big. He got it right away. He also falls back to linear search when the range is down to ten numbers.
What ultra-nerdy thing do you do with your kids?
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November 26th, 2008
10:45 am - SRV
It's too bad about Stevie Ray Vaughan. I wish he were still around.
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November 11th, 2008
09:24 am - On footwear
For those of you who don't know me in person, I ride my bike to work most days. This means I keep a set of shoes at work, so I don't have to haul shoes back and forth every day.
Those shoes are skate shoes. Why do I wear skate shoes when I don't skate? Same reason I wear a baseball cap when I don't play baseball, I guess. I mostly wear skate shoes at home too. On my bike I wear some Shimano cycle touring shoes.
I recently had occasion to bring new shoes to work. I grabbed an old pair of running shoes out of the closet. My knees suck, so I haven't run in years; consequently these shoes have pretty much been languishing.
And when I put them on at work, I learned something: holy crap, running shoes are light!
Or, conversely, all the other shoes I wear are heavy by comparison. Skate shoes are heavy because they have a thick and fairly rigid rubber sole for better traction on your sick deck. Cheap bike shoes (like the ones I have) are heavy too, because they have a thick and fairly rigid insole made of plastic, to which you bolt a heavy metal cleat. Expensive bike shoes have insoles made of carbon fiber for a greater rigidity-to-weight ratio.
I forget what the name of the effect is where the salesman shows you the $2,500 suit, and all of a sudden the $1,500 suit doesn't seem that expensive. But that contrast effect really hit me.
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November 5th, 2008
05:22 pm - Bleg: I just want to type
Here's what I want in a keyboard.
- Split or "batwing" configuration.
- No freaking F-Lock key.
- Normal (not sideways) 6-pad.
- Windows keys on both sides. This makes it easier to lock my machine one-handed.
- No numeric keypad. I don't do numeric data entry for a living.
- Media transport and volume HID buttons.
- Bonus points: USB instead of PS/2.
"batwing" + "no numeric keypad" turns out to be the tough combination to find. If I find such a beast and like it, I'll buy approximately four of them - one for work, one for home, plus two spares.
Anyone know of such a thing? Price no object.
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October 18th, 2008
12:25 am - What I want for Christmas
If someone doesn't get me one of these for Christmas, you are all fucking fired:
( cut for width )
I can alternate it with my current favorite t-shirt (it's the one on the left - I'm wearing it RIGHT NOW):
Also, Peggle Nights is addictive.
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October 8th, 2008
September 23rd, 2008
08:30 pm - You know what would be awesome?
Here's a form factor I'd like to see. The new HTC/T-Mo Android phone has a display that slides on the long display axis to reveal a keyboard. Great so far. Only, instead of just sliding, it would be pretty nice if it could slide open then flip over, like a Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso wristwatch.
The flip side could have a small, thin, cheap, secondary, ruggedized display like a low-resolution monochrome OLED. Or it could just be hard plastic to keep the BOM down (and to add some good sticker real estate). That way you could jam the device in your pocket without fearing for your fancy-pants fragile expensive HVGA display.
Ideally the user could answer calls with the display closed, but I imagine that would entail plenty of firmware design problems.
Design of the hinge mechanism is left as an exercise for the reader. The very, very smart reader.
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July 23rd, 2008
03:20 pm - Too true
(3:19:31 PM) Message could not be sent because a connection error occurred:
christ msn messenger is flaky lately
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mattsnaps's journal
