Digital Hologram

This is totally awesome. Try the digital hologram.

(news via TechCrunch)

Is Obama using hypnosis?

Some claim so.

Or how about the Obama Code?

Memorable Quotes by Erik Demaine

Memorable quotes from Lecture 2 of SMA 5503, attributed to Erik D Demaine.

• I have a feeling, by the end of the lecture, this blackboard will be totally stink.
  
• This is, again, divine inspiration. And, if you have a good connection to some divinity, you are all set. But it is a little bit harder for the rest of us mere mortals.
  
• It usually just works. That's the great thing about it. It provides you intuition for free. It tells you what the answer is pretty much.
• There are three kinds of mathematicians, those who can add and those who cannot, and I am the latter kind so I need your help.
• And, if we believe in fate and we see this three number recurrence, we know that we have the right answer.

A guide to virtual hosts in Apache

This is quick and dirty guide to using virtual hosts in Apache (on Windows). Included is an extra step on how to get a URL besides http://localhost/. There are several advantages to doing this, such as easier maintenance of various projects/apps etc.

1. Edit the httpd.conf file

In APACHE_PATH/conf/httpd.conf:

# Virtual hosts
Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

Uncomment the line above.

2. Edit the httpd-vhosts.conf file

In APACHE_PATH/conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

NameVirtualHost 127.0.0.2:80

Listen 127.0.0.2:80

<VirtualHost>

  ServerName subdomain1.local
  DocumentRoot "C:/wamp/apps/some_project/"
  DirectoryIndex index.php

  <Directory "C:/wamp/apps/some_project/">
    AllowOverride All
    Allow from All
  </Directory>

  #you can even have an alias here
  Alias /blog "C:/wamp/apps/some_project_blog/"
  <Directory "C:/wamp/apps/some_project_blog/">
    AllowOverride All
    Allow from All
  </Directory>

</VirtualHost>

Note: The ServerName is configured in C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts (see step 3). If you do not plan to follow step 3, comment out the line with the ServerName directive.

3. Edit your hosts file

(This isn't really necessary, but it doesn't hurt to have some cool top-level-domain redirection.)

In C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts (or wherever it is), add an additional line:

127.0.0.2 subdomain1.local

Note: you cannot specify a port number here. (this is not port mapping) E.g.: 127.0.0.2:8080 will not work.

4. "Debugging" purposes

You can do these in cmd:

ipconfig /flushdns
ipconfig /displaydns

The /displaydns command isn't necessary, but its useful for checking if you got your settings right.

5. Restart Apache

For more reading up, check out the friendly Apache docs.

Random

1. Chaitin's Constant. Scary? Here is a very interesting article by Gregory Chaitin too.
2. Django (Python) > CakePHP + Symfony (PHP) ??
3. Ubiquity really rocks. Its a Firefox extension. However, the current version seems to have memory leaks.
4. www.whitehouse.gov (formally at change.gov). This website is a model for governments across the world to learn from.
5. Blueprint CSS. I will consider using this the next time I design a website.
6. InterfaceLIFT Wallpapers. Some really beautiful wallpapers here.
7. Official Windows 7 Wallpapers.
8. TypeFaster is a great tool for learning how to touch-type.

Macworld and CES 2009

Macworld Keynote by Philip Schiller
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
Moscone Center - West Hall
San Francisco, CA
(Macworld: 5 to 9 Jan)

CES Keynote by Steve Ballmer
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
6:30 p.m.
The Venetian, Palazzo Ballroom
Los Angeles, CA
(CES: 8 to 11 Jan)

Obama TIME Person of the Year

Barack Obama has been named the TIME person of the year. This, perhaps, nicely caps off his achievements this year. But his ascendancy to the world's most powerful office comes with high expectations and high hopes, especially in such uncertain economic times. If all that he said is to be realized, a "brighter day will come".

Henry Paulson, Nicholas Sarkozy, Sarah Palin and Zhang Yimou are the runner-ups.


On the tech front, Apple has announced that it is pulling out of MacWorld.

It's hard to believe 2009 is almost here.

Flickr Photo of the Day: Eiffel Tilt-Shift II

This is a tilt-shift fake.

For those who are interested, here is the depth-map that I created and fed to the lens blur filter and here is a shot of the various layers of the mask before assigning gray-values..

There's also a version in my photostream with the focus set on the École Militaire made from the same depth-mask.

March 2008: A nice fella named Martin has made a comprehensive tutorial on how to achieve this effect

Eiffel Tilt-Shift II, originally uploaded by Hanna María & Arnar

Web Browser Security Handbook

Google has compiled and released a Web Browser Security Handbook for web developers. It is released under the Creative Commons license.

The map is not the territory

I came across this concept called General Semantics.