Saturday, February 1, 2003
Wow! Simply wow! Seen at ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
filtercoffee.
filtercoffee.
Archive for January 2003
Friday, January 31, 2003
The adventure that is buying hardware from Apple continues. If this turns out favorably for me, I'm going to reward myself with a long public rant on the quality of their customer service. "Yes sir, we are very apologetic sir, but there is nothing we can do about how lousy our service is."
Thursday, January 30, 2003
Don't you hate it that despite how long instant messengers have been around, several people still start conversations with the old school formalities of "How are you?" and "I'm fine."?
An instant messenger conversation is meant to be like a real life conversation held in unreal-time, not like a letter you write once a month to someone a long distance away. When will people start to grasp this etiquette?
An instant messenger conversation is meant to be like a real life conversation held in unreal-time, not like a letter you write once a month to someone a long distance away. When will people start to grasp this etiquette?
Tuesday, January 28, 2003
The LiveJournal meetup happened today. In attendance were cyanna, davecorun, fuso13, holyjes, yeimi and myself. I got the honor of turning up first and telling the people who run the place that I was here for a get-together and I didn't know how many people were coming or even who was coming. Then everyone turned up and I did the usual sit-in-the-corner-and-stare-at-everybody routine.
cyanna was right: my new haircut looks terrible. Either I shed more or tolerate it until it grows back:
cyanna, davecorun, fuso13, holyjes, yeimi and myself. I got the honor of turning up first and telling the people who run the place that I was here for a get-together and I didn't know how many people were coming or even who was coming. Then everyone turned up and I did the usual sit-in-the-corner-and-stare-at-everybody routine.cyanna was right: my new haircut looks terrible. Either I shed more or tolerate it until it grows back:
Tuesday, January 28, 2003
I finally took the plunge today and ordered a PowerBook G4 15". Apple will hopefully deliver it before I leave the US.
I'm still a little jittery from the decision to leave behind all that is familiar in computing, including the security of being able to take take apart my desktop machine should some component malfunction.
And jittery especially since given the expected delivery date and my travel schedule, I will have no time to reconsider should something not work out (for example, discovering that the power adapter they shipped will not work in India). I hope I have taken care of all the possible impediments that were preparing to greet me.
Apple will hopefully honor the 3-day shipping time they promised, and I can expect to spend one and a half months running around India with that machine, giving it a taste of the worst that Indian public transport and infrastructure has to offer.
As for right now, perhaps some cool Apple Cider will quell the jitter. Anticipation has rarely known a greater existence in me.
I'm still a little jittery from the decision to leave behind all that is familiar in computing, including the security of being able to take take apart my desktop machine should some component malfunction.
And jittery especially since given the expected delivery date and my travel schedule, I will have no time to reconsider should something not work out (for example, discovering that the power adapter they shipped will not work in India). I hope I have taken care of all the possible impediments that were preparing to greet me.
Apple will hopefully honor the 3-day shipping time they promised, and I can expect to spend one and a half months running around India with that machine, giving it a taste of the worst that Indian public transport and infrastructure has to offer.
As for right now, perhaps some cool Apple Cider will quell the jitter. Anticipation has rarely known a greater existence in me.
Sunday, January 26, 2003
Today I went to Washington and saw the White House. The local squirrels are fat, stripeless and totally fearless.
Most of the buildings in downtown Washington look like they're at least a few centuries old. They did not seem very tall, but I counted the floors on one and it had 12. Almost every building in the area is about the same height. They don't look very tall though because they are wider than they are tall.
The Washington monument is several times taller than any of these buildings—the one in Baltimore (the original) is a mere midget in comparison.
Most of the buildings in downtown Washington look like they're at least a few centuries old. They did not seem very tall, but I counted the floors on one and it had 12. Almost every building in the area is about the same height. They don't look very tall though because they are wider than they are tall.
The Washington monument is several times taller than any of these buildings—the one in Baltimore (the original) is a mere midget in comparison.
Sunday, January 19, 2003
Jason Nolan has a nice round-up of blogging tools on his blog. I have just two issues with his notes:
Sunday, January 19, 2003
More of the stuff that memories are made of: vatsa's home page in 1998, and also mine (forgot that the URL changed when I mentioned this last month).
vatsa's home page in 1998, and also mine (forgot that the URL changed when I mentioned this last month).
Sunday, January 19, 2003
I finished with Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age today. Now I have two books to choose from for reading next and I can't decide. What do you people say?
Should I continue with the Stephensonian revelry in technology and the future, or turn inward and reflect on where my life is heading?
Should I continue with the Stephensonian revelry in technology and the future, or turn inward and reflect on where my life is heading?
Friday, January 17, 2003
Elsewhere, morning has unfolded. And therefore will begin another conversation.
Friday, January 17, 2003
I'm expecting to be in Bangalore February 6. If my tickets work out, that is.
As it stands now, I'm flying United to Frankfurt via Chicago on Feb 5, 2003, and Lufthansa Frankfurt to Bangalore on Jan 30, 2003. This was supposed to be a single ticket all the way through.
As it stands now, I'm flying United to Frankfurt via Chicago on Feb 5, 2003, and Lufthansa Frankfurt to Bangalore on Jan 30, 2003. This was supposed to be a single ticket all the way through.
Thursday, January 16, 2003
Bright white night. Two below. Three more to go for yesterday's low.
Tanya Donelly's howl is eerie.
Tanya Donelly's howl is eerie.
Thursday, January 16, 2003
Amazing! The x2ftp.oulu.fi msdos archive is still online. After all these years! *sniff!* Brings back such fond memories.1
1. Temporary URLs, not guaranteed to be available anytime in the future.
1. Temporary URLs, not guaranteed to be available anytime in the future.
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
on my way up north
up on the ventura
i pulled back the hood
and i was talking to you
and i knew then it would be
a life long thing
but i didn't know that we
we could break a silver lining
and i'm so sad
like a good book
i can't put this day back
a sorta fairytale
with you
a sorta fairytale
with you
— Tori Amos, A Sorta Fairytale
I could listen to this track all day long and just like it even more with each rewind. Tori Amos is the best! Interestingly enough, Tori studied piano at the Peabody Institute, which is three blocks from where I live.
up on the ventura
i pulled back the hood
and i was talking to you
and i knew then it would be
a life long thing
but i didn't know that we
we could break a silver lining
and i'm so sad
like a good book
i can't put this day back
a sorta fairytale
with you
a sorta fairytale
with you
— Tori Amos, A Sorta Fairytale
I could listen to this track all day long and just like it even more with each rewind. Tori Amos is the best! Interestingly enough, Tori studied piano at the Peabody Institute, which is three blocks from where I live.
Monday, January 13, 2003
Smith & W* is finally making sense, after all these years.
Soon to be public. Now for much needed sleep and relief from sore fingers.
Soon to be public. Now for much needed sleep and relief from sore fingers.
Sunday, January 12, 2003
I'm trying to display 8-bit ASCII (character set IBM-850) in a HTML page. Does anyone have any ideas on how to do this?
One method is to use an inline frame and set the inner document's charset to ibm-850, then hope the browser recognizes it and has a compatible font. Both Galeon and Mozilla list it among the supported character sets. However, I'm not very happy with the idea of using frames to separate the content from the template. I looked up the HTML spec to see if any tags included a charset attribute, but the only ones that do are A and LINK, and both refer to the character set of the linked target.
Another method is to simply translate characters from ibm-850 to their nearest equivalent in iso-8859-1 or utf-8. This method is lossy but guaranteed to work with any user agent that can load a standard HTML page. But for this, I need a translation table. Anyone know where I can get one?
One method is to use an inline frame and set the inner document's charset to ibm-850, then hope the browser recognizes it and has a compatible font. Both Galeon and Mozilla list it among the supported character sets. However, I'm not very happy with the idea of using frames to separate the content from the template. I looked up the HTML spec to see if any tags included a charset attribute, but the only ones that do are A and LINK, and both refer to the character set of the linked target.
Another method is to simply translate characters from ibm-850 to their nearest equivalent in iso-8859-1 or utf-8. This method is lossy but guaranteed to work with any user agent that can load a standard HTML page. But for this, I need a translation table. Anyone know where I can get one?
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