Today I was watching a video clip in Persian about the recent snow in Iran. Here is a sample of someone speaking in reconstructed PIE: I did not know this, but the word Iran comes from the word Aryan which originally referred to members of one of the ancient tribes which came to settle in…

It turns out that most Scotch tape rolls are only 300 inches. But they actually make ones that are 1,100 inches. You can find it even cheaper by searching online – sometimes for almost the same price as a 300 inch roll.

Contact management and calendaring are two of the most fundamental things people do with information appliances. These are so core that I think they lay at the center of working with an information appliance. Over the past years we see how there have been attempts to usurp the formidable status of the office suite –…

Record-breaking cold spells in many places, last year there was a severe drought that impacted a vast swathe of the Midwest. The year before record flooding. Right now in the west is a serious drought and already some communities are under pressure due to water shortage. Is this all the kind of clusterfuck which James…

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Ok.  Now today there’s another news story being published about how the NSA is developing or has the capability to obtain data from “leaky” Android and iOS apps (such as the popular game Angry Birds). Now someone might read this latest story and think “Why wouldn’t the NSA develop capabilities to obtain such data?”  That’s…

about Afghanistan (link to BBC video).  The narrator says that the situation there is not like in Iraq.  Most people on the outside believe that the average person there hates the US and NATO forces and wants them to leave, yet that appears to be quite opposite the case, even among conservative Muslims.  People do…

I’ve used the Vim editor for so long yet never used its spellcheck feature. Tonight while typing a journal entry I wanted to do a spellcheck and found out how easy it is: just type :set spell Here’s an excellent page with everything about Vim’s spellcheck feature: webdesign10.com: How to Use Vim’s Spellchecker The other…

This is so outrageous. Judge Koh is at it again, this time slamming Samsung in favor of Apple because Apple had a patent on – get this – auto-complete. I seriously cannot believe the system is this fucked. This judge should lose her seat on the court. Apple should be slapped with a huge fine…