Thursday, January 19, 2012

Here is a copy of a letter that I sent my Senators and my Representative in Congress. We will see what happens...

Dear Senator McCain, 

I am writing to you as a registered Arizona voter and concerned constituent about S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act. I urge you to vote "no" on the upcoming motion to invoke cloture on the bill. 

Albeit well-intentioned, the PROTECT IP Act does not provide adequate oversight over measures targeted against alleged offenders, raising legitimate concerns about the Act's constitutionality. PROTECT IP would also effectively overturn critical portions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act—portions that form the legal backbone of the American tech industry. These sections (in particular, 17 U.S.C. §512) are what allow the start-up technology companies of today to become the Googles of tomorrow, creating jobs for thousands of Americans in the process. Lastly, the methods through which the PROTECT IP Act would combat copyright infringement are similar—and sometimes identical—in nature to those used by regimes with questionable human rights records. The impression that the United States created the "Great Firewall of America" would irreparably damage our credibility when asking them to remove censorship barriers that impede the spread of democracy and free enterprise. 
The PROTECT IP Act is fundamentally flawed, as it would stifle the growth of our nation’s tech sector, would introduce due process questions, and would erode America’s position as a global leader. As such, it does not deserve floor consideration. Any solution to the piracy problem needs to consider the effects it would have on the Internet economy—a place where the United States has a clear competitive advantage. I hope you will take my concerns about this bill into account, and oppose this legislation by voting "no" on cloture.
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Wednesday, June 1, 2011

That time of the year... again


That time of the year... again, originally uploaded by Titoxd.

The 2011 Atlantic hurricane season has arrived. WikiProject Tropical cyclones will keep posting updates as they become available. You are also encouraged to follow @wikihurricanes for urgent updates.

Monday, January 17, 2011

40,000 sounds easy


40K edits, originally uploaded by Titoxd.

Yet it took 5+ years to do it. I'm going to buy myself a Wikipedia T-shirt now... :P

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Bugzilla "undef error - Cannot determine local time zone" error in Ubuntu 10.10

After upgrading to Ubuntu 10.10, the installation of Bugzilla I had running with little issues since Ubuntu 9.04 suddenly broke with a glaring red box that said "undef error - Cannot determine local time zone" every time I tried to list bugs or display them.

After trying the suggestions at mozilla.support.bugzilla, I was unable to get Bugzilla to recognize the system's timezone setting. So, I just went hardcore and moved the existing time zone setting out of the way, and made a new symbolic link directly to the timezone file:

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Phoenix /etc/localtime

Surprisingly, it worked...

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Sunday, August 15, 2010

Out with the old...

Enough green. I redesigned the site to give it a slightly more appealing look...

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Sometimes interesting stuff happens


IMG_9182, originally uploaded by Titoxd.

I've worked on many current-event articles in Wikipedia; however, I cannot remember when a current event happened close enough to me to actually be able to observe it unfold in real time. That happened on Tuesday when the Town Lake west dam collapsed; while I was not on campus at the time, I did track it as soon as news broke on wiki (although to be honest, I reverted the initial reports since nobody in the traditional media had reported it online at the time).

I went to the lake to take pictures of the rupture's aftermath, and I've posted all of them on Flickr. I also posted one in the Wikimedia Commons, and to my delight it has been used by other people in the online community. :) So it feels rather different to be "reporting" on news than to be searching for photographs or articles in the news...

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Saturday, December 5, 2009

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Map projections

On-topic for a change... :P

Die.net shows an interesting utility for graphing the illuminated half of the Earth at any given time. It's nifty, but the fact that it uses Blue Marble, just as the track map generator does, makes me wonder about how it can be integrated into the track program... particularly of interest would be the modifications to different projections, as we're restricted to only a carte parallelogrammatique in our output. They use ImageMagick, so we even share a back end... hmm.

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Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Winding Road 2


Winding Road 2, originally uploaded by Titoxd.

I'll be posting some pics from the trip gradually.

Here's one of the ones I liked the most; I clicked on the "enhance" option in iPhoto '08 to improve the dynamic range of the picture, although I'm not sure whether I like it over the original. Anyways, enjoy...

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EvilCat


EvilCat, originally uploaded by Titoxd.

Now, Natasha likes to pose for some reason... so here's a pic of her in her latest attempt to interrupt me while I'm doing homework!

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Tuesday, October 6, 2009

The advisor won't enjoy this

The headline says everything: "German men are the 'world's worst lovers'"... and as mildly interested I am in seeing the prof's reaction to this article, I think it's prudent not to ask... :P

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Thursday, October 1, 2009

Now this one is just weird

Unicorn bride? Yes... because we all want to hear, "your bride looks like a horse"...

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Sunday, September 27, 2009

This is so terrible it's not even funny

Some things are bad, some are just terrible. This belongs to the latter.

And the dad dropped £100k on this crap?

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Friday, September 25, 2009

En un cerrar de ojos

En esos momentos, nuestro héroe observaba a aquella mística fémina que se apoderaba de sus pensamientos. A pesar de la hora que marcaban los relojes, la sutil influencia del sereno neutralizaba el calor que solía hacer acto de presencia en esas noches de verano. Por ende, era una noche ideal para que la pareja enfrentara una solitaria batalla contra las fuerzas del desenfreno y la pasión; una batalla sin testigo alguno, excepto la siempre-vigilante luna que se encontraba reposando en la cúspide del cénit.

A pesar de encontrarse en la situación que tanto anhelaba, él se encontraba agitado, bajo el asecho de las más primitivas fuerzas de la naturaleza. ¿Acaso era posible que esa mujer, que su sueño oculto y prohibido, se encontrara a insignificantes pulgadas de su cuerpo? Sin embargo, sus dudas no concordaban con las señales que su cerebro procesaba: El olfato le decía que aquel exquisito aroma de fresas se encontraba muy cerca—aquel aroma que le había atraído a la bella doncella en primer lugar. El tacto podía sentir una textura lisa, pero suave, como aquellas manos que una vez había alcanzado acariciar a base de subrepción, casualidad y circunstancia. Sin embargo, el más deleitante de los estímulos que percibía era la vista: Ver a la causa de sus bajos instintos entre sus brazos y observándole con delirio carnal en la mirada.

La tenue brisa balanceaba el cabello ocre de la joven mujer, escondiendo su rostro en sombras tanto inocentes como románticas, invitando al enamorado a acercarse más y más. El cálido brillo de una lámpara de sodio iluminaba su piel de marfil hasta que adquirió un color de durazno—y para nuestro aspirante a amante, su piel se veía tan deliciosa y apetecible como si fuera hecha de la mismísima fruta. Sus ojos negros, oscuros cómo las noches de invierno, tenían un brillo que él siempre había rogado ver, una reflexión vidriosa que surgía del mutuo amor del cual siempre había soñado. Atrapado por esos ojos, él se veía incapaz de evitar el inevitable acercamiento entre sus labios—aunque no es como si él deseara evitar algo que había deseado por lo que parecía una eternidad.

Poco a poco, la marcha del deseo los fue conectando más y más—lentamente, sí, pero también definitivamente. Él sentía como el olor de esa bendita mujer se intensificaba como los milímetros que los separaban cedían su existencia al llamar de la noche. Sus manos comenzaban a emigrar debajo de la sinuosa cintura, con rumbo a regiones más redondas y acolchonadas debajo de las caderas. Este alarmante recorrido recibió respuesta, ya que ella gradualmente empujó las cumbres de sus pequeños, pero firmes senos hasta que quedaron plasmadas contra su musculatura.

Ya poseídos por los trucos de Eros, la joven se encontraba frente a frente con su admirador secreto. Dentro de él, la tensión existente suplicaba que la corta distancia entre su boca y los rubíes de escarlata que ella tenía por labios dejara de existir. Él estaba a punto de estallar en éxtasis—tanto tiempo deseándola, los años deseándola a escondidas, las frecuentes desilusiones que tuvo que enfrentar otra y otra vez, en fin—en fin, la interminable espera se encontraba a meras fracciones de segundo de terminar. El podía sentir el respirar de ella en sus propios labios, y estaba listo para besarle como si fuera la única oportunidad que tendría en la vida, entregándole cuerpo y alma...

En ese entonces, una súbita y desagradable voz destruyó sus anhelos:
—"Van a ser $4.32 en la segunda ventana..."

El joven soñador entonces regresó a la realidad: se había quedado esperando tanto tiempo esperando que le atendieran en el drive-thru que perdió toda noción de espacio y tiempo. Aquel abrazo nunca existió, el olor que percibía venía de la malteada que había ordenado, y sus manos estaban a punto de destruir a un pobre durazno que andaba rodando en el asiento del pasajero. La espera tendría que continuar... pero el sueño, el deseo, no terminaría ahí...

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Time: "Wikipedia a Victim of Own Success?"

As the link in the header indicates, TIME Magazine has published an article that postulates hypotheses about Wikipedia's growth trends. It's an interesting read, check it out.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Compiling Nokia QT on Snow Leopard

Well, I've been trying to install ParaView for a while on Snow Leopard, and I was unable to do so since the installer for the current version of the Qt SDK (4.5.2) is broken. However, not all hope is lost. The installer still contains everything necessary to get Qt up and running. Here's what to do:

First, open the package and mount it by double-clicking it. Cancel the installer that pops out, and go into the Finder, and open the Qt SDK image. You will see a "QtSDK.mpkg" icon, like shown below:
Right-click on it to reveal a context menu, and select "Show Package Contents", which will open a new window with the innards of the installer:
Not very exciting, but it will suffice. Go into Contents/Packages and you will see the motherlode:

Now, each .pkg file contains its own installer, which you can activate by double-clicking on each of the icons. I installed the libraries, debuglibraries and headers packages first, then everything else. Now, if the installation was successful, we should be able to go into /Developer/Applications/Qt and see if the qtdemo program exists. In my installation, it did, and when I executed it, the following screen came up:

Success!

I haven't tried playing around with it very much, but the gradient and vector deformation demos do work. Now I just have to try getting ParaView to work, but that'll be later...

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Removing the spider webs

Well, it's been a while since I actually wrote anything in here. Let's try expanding the scope of the blog from wiki-oriented to essentially just about anything and we'll see where we go from there.

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