xeger.net

Touchy Touchpads

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 22:00:00 GMT

Wondering how to enable multitouch scrolling on your eee PC? It’s pretty easy.

Assuming you’re using XOrg:

Section "InputDevice" 
    Identifier "Configured Mouse" 
    Driver     "Synaptics" 
    Option     "CorePointer" 
    Option     "SHMConfig"            "true" 
    Option     "VertTwoFingerScroll"  "1" 
    Option     "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "1" 
EndSection

A Fantastic Contraption

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 04:37:00 GMT

I’m not really a player of Flash games, but Fantastic Contraption is the niftiest thing since sliced bread. It plays like The Incredible Machine, only more down-to-earth.

Shiny New Toy

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 00:30:00 GMT

Spurred to action by a fit of insomnia, I decided to replace the software I use to host my blog, photo gallery and other bits of my digital persona. After two weeks of restless nights, you see the results before your eyes. My homepage is no longer a blog; it is now the world’s most underutilized CMS. Victory is mine!

If I had any loyal readers, they would agree that I don’t post much content on my home page. I don’t have much to say, I don’t get much traffic, and my needs vis a vis blogging software are few. But since I began fiddling with Rails and RIA development, I have been afflicted by the need to engineer away my software and replace it with homebrew Web 2.0 crap. I have two excuses for this behavior:

I’m teaching myself new tech
I’m engaging in entrepreneurship by creating valuable intellectual property

Actually, I’m a raving loony and I can’t help myself; writing code is my OCD tic, the digital equivalent of uncontrollable hand-washing. But I digress. About the blog…

Alas, Poor Yorrick!

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 18:54:00 GMT

It was an off day for our intrepid travelers. I was on my last pair of pants and we’d walked across central Copenhagen in search of The Laundromat Cafe, one of a new breed of fusion cafes that serves coffee, drinks and full meals while you wait for your clothes to finish their spin cycle.

After taking care of chores, we decided to check out the nearby Assistens Kierkegaard, Copenhagen’s main burial ground where noteworthies such as Hans Christian Andersen are interred. Being that it was only a few blocks from the laundromat, we figured a bit of gravespotting would make for a nice, brief touristy distraction.

At the entrance was a placard with a map of “known peoples’ resting places.” We figured out approximately where to find Niels Bohr’s family plot and headed off to snap some pictures. That’s when our troubles began.

Tower of Babel, Norwegian Style

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 12:23:00 GMT

When we landed in Norway, I began to notice an interesting pattern of interaction between me and the locals. For an example, let’s look at how I ask for a table in a restaurant.

Hostess (presumably speaking Norwegian): Mxlkrmf tfiu?
Tony: Hi; we’d like a table.
Hostess: Blw dcij vcdhuhy for two?
Tony: Yeah; for two, please.
Hostess: Trsdj swofiu jasj ic kiscijds dij?
Tony: Sorry? I’m afraid I don’t understand much Norwegian.
Hostess: Oh, you’re speaking English!

Crooning for Kroner

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:48:00 GMT

Scandinavia is a singular tourist destination for Americans. Everywhere else we go in the world, we face culture shock. Not so in northern Europe. Virtually everyone in a service job here speaks excellent English and has a stunning command of the American slang lexicon (when’s the last time you heard a Frenchman say “you should take me up on it” or “where are you headed?”) Iceland’s national snack food is a hot dog, Norway’s most famous chain restaurant is an upmarket Pizza Hut, and all of these countries are immersed in our pop culture.

With all of these cultural affinities, we have no problem with culture shock here. In its place, we face sticker shock. Prices here are outrageous!

Reykjavik Death March

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:26:00 GMT

On the morning of our arrival, the temperature in Reykjavik was a bracing -2 C with 90% humidity. Combined with the wind-chill factor due to a stiff breeze, the apparent temperature was, to use a meteorological term, “butt cold.” As we quickly discovered, the best survival stratagem in this kind of weather is to rush frantically between heated indoor spaces. Happily, Reykjavik is equipped with a surplus of cozy street-side cafés that are happy to sell you a $5 cup of coffee, usually with gratis wi-fi and unlimited lingering time included in the price.

Needless to say, the bus driver dropped us off several blocks from our hotel; also, our room wouldn’t be ready until 2pm – but the hotel was willing to hold our bags for us until then. We gratefully dumped our stuff and set out for a day of surrealistic, sleep-deprived sightseeing.

Truth be told, I don’t remember much about the museums and cultural sites we visited that day; I was so weary that I could barely keep my eyes open, and my most lucid memories involve sitting in a café drinking coffee, glad to finally be able to feel my face and limbs. Our hours of lingering afforded plenty of people-watching opportunities, and I began to drink in the culture and language of Iceland. Here are a few brief notes.

Air Travel Sucks!

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 13:17:00 GMT

In the hour or so we allow ourselves every evening to relax and play with the laptop, I spend most of my time diddling with Lightroom or planning the next phase of the trip. It turns out that Anthony is an expert travel logistician, adept at surfing Trip Advisor and Sidestep for the best hotel deals, figuring out which rail pass to buy, deciding which sights are worth seeing. Still, I try to do my part, and all of the planning leaves little time for blogging.

Because I’ve been so lazy, I’m going to have to cover all of Iceland – and all of Norway so far – in a few quick blog entries. In the process, I’m sure I will ruthlessly murder more than one detail.

Our journey began as always, with a trip to LAX in a rented econo-box. Virgin America had us checked into our flight and past security with hours to spare, giving us time to duck into an airport bar for a pre-flight drink or thre. Thus did I board the flight to New York well lubricated with whiskey, and somewhat less daunted by the 28 hours of air travel that lay before us.

ACPI Madness, Suspend Insanity

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 07:27:00 GMT

Having problems putting Ubuntu to sleep or (my case) waking it up again? Check out μswsusp, a killer user-mode suspend/resume utility. It eschews the trouble-fraught kernel ACPI code in favor of a simpler approach: halting the system and saving its state by streaming /dev/snapshot to disk. Magic!

Instructions for integrating it into Ubuntu available courtesy of Paul Betts’ blog

Markov Chains, Bayesian Inference and Natural Language

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 08:45:00 GMT

Just a little idea I’ve been working on over the past week. It seems that by combining Markovian models and Bayesian inference, it’s possible to do some really neat things with recognizing natural language!

By now, most geeks are familiar with the idea of Bayesian inference because of its use in spam blockers. The idea is pretty simple: build a statistical model of which words are likely to follow which other words in a “valid” text (e.g. anything that is not spam). Use Bayes’ inference rule to “chain together” probabilistic judgments about how likely successive pairs of words are to appear next to one another, and after observing enough text, you arrive at a conclusion about whether this text “valid.”