general

I was just browsing through the MIT OpenCourseWare, and the amount of freely available information available is quite impressive. The courses span many departments, although I mainly checked out the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science section. They have lecture notes on many different classes, both undergraduate and graduate, covering pretty much all aspects of the Computer Science field. Some of the courses also come with full video presentations. This is definitely well worth keeping in mind as a source of information....

While going through the paperwork that has accumulated since our move a few weeks ago and paying bills, I had to log into the Cingular and Allstate websites. For some reason, both are down for maintenance right now (and this is not even the first time this has happened to me). Is this really necessary? Even if they need to upgrade their services, it seems like they should be able to do this in a more seamless fashion....

Since we moved to San Mateo a little over a week ago, my commute shrunk from about 25-45 minutes (depending on traffic) to less than 10 minutes. This in itself is great, and I really don’t miss driving. However, it does have a minor downside: I can no longer catch up on podcasts while commuting. Until about two years ago, I commuted to work by train, about 1 hour each way....

I had to temporarily disable comments until I have time to upgrade Wordpress and improve my spam protection. I had barely gotten any comment spam over the last year or so, but since yesterday this has changed again. I am currently getting spammed at the rate of about 2 comments per minute…

It hasn’t been officially announced yet, but as reported by this blog post, Google has launched a new service: Google Mars It’s just like Google Maps, except that it allows you to view Mars (doh!). There are three different views: Elevation, Visible, and Infrared. There are also clickable landmarks for the various successful and unsuccessful Mars spacecraft, lists of named regions and craters, and more. Check it out, it’s pretty cool!...