As I was riding on the bus recently, another passenger a few rows behind me was listening to music. He or she had headphones on but the music was loud enough to leak out of the headphones. When there is leakage, it does not matter whether the music is actually Mozart or Britney Spears: it [...]
Recently, I’ve stumbled upon this little piece of wisdom: “stop pretending that you are going to keep in touch with someone if you don’t really mean it.” The context of this advice was when you run into old schoolmates or workmates, chat for 2 minutes and then exclaim: “let’s keep in touch.”
I find myself in [...]
When it comes to securing the data I have on my computers, I take the task seriously. I use Ubuntu and Windows on my laptop. The Ubuntu installation is fully encrypted. There’s a performance hit but I feel pretty sure that if my laptop is ever stolen or lost or needs service by a third [...]
I do feel angry about things, happy about things, annoyed about things, sad about things. Pride, however, is not natural for me. It is not that there is nothing I could point at and express pride about. I can conceive that someone might feel pride if their hard work is fruitful. I can also conceive [...]
A little bat was clinging to the space shuttle during lift off. NASA thinks it must have died. Rest in peace, buddy!
I’m happy and relieved because I learned about an hour ago that my step-granddaughter, Olivia, was born without complications. Due to the fact that I’m on the opposite end of the globe doing research, my wife has been using her Blackberry to keep me informed of the developments by email. I was quite [...]
Salshdot is reporting on an article in Scientific American about how people grieving the death of loved ones tend to hallucinate.
When I first saw the post on Slashdot, it reminded me of when Ice, our cat, passed away nearly three years ago. For several days after his passing, I hallucinated his presence. I [...]
Charlie, my wife’s stepfather, passed away last Friday, US time, Saturday morning, Taiwan time. Unfortunately, it is hard to say much about him in this post. He was not interested in my world and I was not interested in his. I saw him only a few times and during those episodes our [...]
I’ve added a widget in the sidebar in which I’m going to list OSS projects I’ve given money to. I have two principal goals for doing this. First, I want to promote software I’m sponsoring. The publicity I provide is quite modest but it is better than nothing. Secondly, I want [...]
A White Bear recently wrote about her seekrit vice: the reality show Age of Love. Since I have not watched the show, I do not have an opinion about its contents. However, A White Bear’s observations about the contents of the show are compatible with what I would expect to find, if I [...]
