.Mac Web Gallery

Recently, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the all-new, redesigned iMac and demoed the new features in iLife '08, iWork '08, and .Mac at an Apple Special Event, held at a Town Hall meeting in Cupertino (watch Steve Job's presentation here). Among the impressive announcements were Numbers (iWork's new spreadsheet program) and the new .Mac Web Gallery (for photos & videos).

True to Apple's slick design style, the .Mac Web Gallery is absolutely cool. I compared several web services such as Flickr (demo) and Picasa Web Albums (demo), but none can be beat the .Mac Web Gallery (live demo 1, 2, 3) in terms of the professional layout and design.

Apple also made Numbers more than just a spreadsheet program, with its intuitive and easy to use interface - Numbers could be used instantly to make small presentations, such as positioning multiple spreadsheets in one "canvas" (or page), along with various elements such as charts, pictures and titles, without resorting to using a presentation-specific software such as Keynote or PowerPoint.


To end off this post, here are some titbits:
- 'Grass' Wallpaper for Leopard as shown during WWDC 07
- Hamad's Vista Wallpapers (direct download here)

Flickr Photo of the Day: Wood dowels for lanterns

everything changes in large numbers

Wood dowels for lanterns, originally uploaded by paul+photos=moody

Your CMOS Battery

Your computer's system clock is dependable on your CMOS battery. Which actually means that your computer's system clock is like your watch. If the CMOS battery runs flat, your system clock stops or reverts to its original setting (e.g. 1 JAN 2000) upon every reboot (You may also see such an error message - "Time Date not set"). Indeed, many first time computer users, and even some long-term users do not know this. Of course, this probably applies to those who are rich enough to change computers frequently as well.

Depending on your computer usage, your computer's (desktops and laptops) CMOS battery has a high chance of running flat after 5 years. The problem (of the system clock) arises when one switches off the computer for a longer period of time (e.g. 12 hrs), which is also when the energy from the capacitors are diminished.)

In my case, another interesting observation was the need to press the start button twice to boot the computer - the first to recharge the capacitor as the battery is flat, the second to use the available energy reserve (in this case the only remaining reserve has to come from the capacitor) to get the CPU started.

Thus, the solution will be to open up your PC casing and replace the CMOS battery mounted on the motherboard, such as in the photo taken from Compaq's website below.
The CMOS battery comes in various types and sizes (it can be roundish or squarish).

To get a replacement battery is not hard. Open up your casing and note down the type of battery on the motherboard. The one in the photo is the Lithium Battery, CR2032 (3 Volt). This battery also happens to be found commonly in watches. Thus, one can go to a watch repair shop, or a shop selling watches, or your nearby equipment shop to buy a replacement battery. It does not matter which brand you use (Maxwell, Toshiba, etc). Remove the old battery and put in the new battery with the same orientation - the positive side of the battery, the one with words engraved, normally faces up (as in the photo).

Depending on the length of time since you last power down your computer and also how fast you change your battery, you may encounter an error message - "Invalid CMOS Checksum" upon your first reboot thereafter. This should not be of any worry - simply let the computer reboot again and you are done.

Good Math, Bad Math

A week ago, I chanced upon a good blog - Good Math, Bad Math. Basically, its a blog that discusses a wide range of science, from computer science to mathematics and physics, but with an emphasis on mathematics. The blog is written by a really cool guy - Mark Chu-Carroll, a PhD Computer Scientist working at Google. In many ways, the blog offers a platform for intellectual discourse - criticising and highlighting bad/flawed science and mathematics. This is a reminder that the very notion of science, no matter how grand it may seem, is susceptible to those who either manipulate it for their own means (e.g. General Relativity is not about all things being relative [not absolute]... just as relativistic speed do not refer to speed of light being undefined.), or confuse it unintentionally.

Currently, I am reading Mark's recent articles on Graph Theory.

Artificial Intelligence: A Beginner's Guide

Two weeks ago, I read the book Artificial Intelligence: A Beginner's Guide written by Blay Whitby. As the title suggests, it was a very brief introduction to AI, While the book did not dealt too much into techniques regarding AI (neural networks, backward propagation, genetic algorithms, etc), it provided a healthy dose of discussion on the philosophy regarding AI, such as strong and weak AI, why films are usually wrong about AI, and what AI holds for the future. Of course, one cannot discuss AI without the Turing Test and the Ford and Hayes (1998) analogy of flight. Overall, its a proper introduction to anyone without any knowledge of AI (knowledge in this context excludes what you learn in films).

Eric Schmidt with iPhone (Photos)

Eric Schmidt showed off his iPhone when he spoke to the World Economic Forum at the Google Campus yesterday. He took out his iPhone at around 24:30 in this video (thanks to Robert Scoble for this hint), to show his location using Google Maps.

Photos of Eric Schmidt with the iPhone below:

Photo of the Google Campus on the iPhone.

and he even commented, "this is the privilege of being on the Apple Board... and I have to guard this with my life here."

Flickr Photo of the Day: The Writing Is On The Wall – If You Can See It, You Can’t Read It

Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
-- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

I passed this sculpture so many times. You have to. It is made of stainless steel and placed in one of the busiest Wellington streets, in the perfect position to capture the colorful lights of the city after daylight, the nightglow of the capital.

The ‘Invisible City’, as it’s called, is the gigantic panel of Braille text that highlights the communication gap between those who can’t see and the rest of us.

The post is designed to remember all the folks, my countrymen and yours, the often invisible part of society, all those who finish schools, who work, play music, do sports, pay taxes, have and raise children, to the benefit of us all.

The Writing Is On The Wall – If You Can See It, You Can’t Read It, originally uploaded by Peter from Wellington

D5 - Historic Moment?

And, you know, I think of most things in life as either a Bob Dylan or a Beatles song, but there’s that one line in that one Beatles song, “you and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.” And that’s clearly true here.
-- Steve Jobs

Last week, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates shared the same stage at D5 - All Things Digital, a yearly conferences hosted by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). It has a historic moment, of sorts, for the two technological giants, who had been at odds at some time or another. The interview was laced with many references to the past and present. To name a few: Bill Gates claiming that he is not fake Steve Jobs, and talking about "Steve’s taste", Steve Jobs saying that "PC Guy is Great. Got a big heart." and most surprisingly, quoting the Beatles (Apple vs Apple was not so long ago).

Perhaps, what was most clear that both Bill and Steve had mutual respect for each other, and Om Malik even went as far to say that Steve Jobs appeared kinder and gentler.

The Mathematical Century

Note: I shall devote this entire post to Mathematics.

I have been reading a book - "The Mathematical Century: The 30 Greatest Problems of the Last 100 Years", written by Italian mathematician Piergiorgio Odifreddi. The one I have been reading is a translated version (from Italian to English). The Mathematical Century provides interesting insight into the development and history of Mathematics in the past decade. By looking at some of the most famous problems in mathematics (eg Fermat's last theorem, Abel's Impossibility Theorem), Piergiorgio Odifreddi traces the development of mathematics since ancient times, from the days of the Geeks, to Pythagoreas and then to modern day mathematics, the progress of which has been largely influenced by Hilbert's problems and perhaps the unification of which by the Bourbaki group.

The book is written in prose-style, free of technical details (this refers to equations, symbols, but does not refer to mathematical terms). (However, some of the ideas presented are rather abstract.) Odifreddi starts by discussing the four main philosophical foundations of mathematics in the 1900s, mainly - Sets (ZFC, etc), Structures, Categories and Functions.

While I admit that I could only understand less than 40% of what was written in the book, the book provided insightful breadth, (rather than depth). Indeed, modern day mathematics is no longer limited to abstract algebra or topology. With the birth of the PC, computer-assisted proofs have become acceptable (eg the Four Colour Theorem) and the P vs NP complexity problem is indisputably one of the most open problem in computer science and mathematics.

Overall, Odifreddi offers a sagacious bird's eye view on mathematics from the perspective of mathematical problems.


Anyone looking forward to appreciating/understanding mathematics should also read A Mathematician's Apology (PDF), an essay written by G. H. Hardy in 1940. It is an essay that is not only reflective, but personal as well. In it, Hardy made one of his most famous observations:

No mathematician should ever allow himself to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game.

While one may agree or disagree with the above statement, the essay certainly proffers intriguing views.

Segmentation Fault!

Fortunately, this post is not about the dreaded segmentation fault that many C programmers will be familiar with. It is instead about the 'dead' Segfault website. Segfault used to be a popular humor website which posted fake news reports on hacker-related topics on a near-daily basis.

Some examples will suffice to show what I mean...

For the first time in recent memory, someone actually clicked an Internet banner ad. This refutes a previous experiment, in which one thousand monkeys were placed in a room for a year with one thousand Internet-connected computers. None of the monkeys clicked a banner ad (one did write a Shakespearean play, however). (See Infinite monkey theorem)

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Assembly: You crash the OS and overwrite the root disk. The system administrator arrives and shoots you in the foot. After a moment of contemplation, the administrator shoots himself in the foot and then hops around the room rabidly shooting at everyone in sight.

MICROSOFT C++ w/ WINDOWS SDK: You write about 100 lines of code to print "Hello, world!" in a dialogue box, only to have a UAE pop up when you click on OK. This shuts down the program manager, leaving you nothing but a screensaver. You then fly to Washington and shoot Bill Gates in the foot.

sh,csh,etc: You can't remember the syntax for anything, so you spend five hours reading man pages before giving up. You then shoot the computer and switch to C.

(more here)

So check out the archived Segfault website for a good laugh.