Ajit K

“A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about
programming, is not worth knowing.” - Alan Perlis

A must read. Snippet from Nikola Tesla’s autobighaphy:

There was another and still more important reason for my late awakening. In my boyhood I suffered from a peculiar affliction due to the appearance of images, often accompanied by strong flashes of light, which marred the sight of real objects and interfered with my thoughts and action. They were pictures of things and scenes which I had really seen, never of those imagined. When a word was spoken to me the image of the object it designated would present itself vividly to my vision and sometimes I was quite unable to distinguish whether what I saw was tangible or not. This caused me great discomfort and anxiety. None of the students of psychology or physiology whom I have consulted, could ever explain satisfactorily these phenomenon. They seem to have been unique although I was probably predisposed as I know that my brother experienced a similar trouble. The theory I have formulated is that the images were the result of a reflex action from the brain on the retina under great excitation. They certainly were not hallucinations such as are produced in diseased and anguished minds, for in other respects I was normal and composed. To give an idea of my distress, suppose that I had witnessed a funeral or some such nerve-wracking spectacle. Then, inevitably, in the stillness of night, a vivid picture of the scene would thrust itself before my eyes and persist despite all my efforts to banish it. If my explanation is correct, it should be possible to project on a screen the image of any object one conceives and make it visible. Such an advance would revolutionize all human relations. I am convinced that this wonder can and will be accomplished in time to come. I may add that I have devoted much thought to the solution of the problem.

!!

Some links for self-study on regex (for python):

http://www.amk.ca/python/howto/regex/

http://www.xellsoft.com/regular_expression.html

http://it.metr.ou.edu/regex/

http://gnosis.cx/publish/programming/regular_expressions.html

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-python5.html

A good read if you need some morale boost. Wake Up Feeling Great With These 22 Tips for High Self-Esteem

Here is a nice read about “PHP Development From Java Architects Eye“. I could feel the same thing right now as I am trying to use PHP for webdev.

Steve Jobs, at the Macworld keynote, sounded the deathknell for Apple computers. This was rightly pointed out by Om Malik.

What does it mean? The meaning is very simple. Users want freedom instead of being locked infront of the networked desktop. The real power of the internet will be unleashed when it becomes mobile. And as the mobile ‘computers’ become good at this job, it will be an end for the ‘desktop computers’. Probably this is what Jobs meant.

While digging, I noticed the following. (Though I hardly look on ads, the decorated ads are so tempting and calling to click ). The topic was Bush Illegally Silences Critic of Iran Policy. Here is what I found to be an interesting advertising case.

In the following screenshot is the ad being displayed in the context of the story.

And the followingis the target when I click on the ad. (I hope its perfectly legal to click on the ad to research whats inside it. Thats all, nothing more. Poor advertiser )

 

I am puzzled at the idea that the advertisers use to display their ads. Their ad was definetely not context sensitive. So, did they display it in the hope that the user will click it and that visiting the target site will solve the purpose?

A BBC report says about a study, “Intelligent children are more likely to become vegetarians later in life, a study says.” A use case for being a vegetarian?
More about it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6180753.stm

 Am I going to be one? Nah, not so soon