tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68866462011-04-21T13:41:57.200-04:00pranoreply@blogger.comBlogger541100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1148653469298511892006-05-26T10:13:00.000-04:002006-05-26T10:27:02.106-04:00

I haven't written anything here in a while, so here's me trying to get back into the game with a bit of Greasemonkey goodness. I started reading the online version of Practical Common Lisp by Peter Seibel. I like the style and like it so far (first two chapters done). When I read a book, I just can't help myself reading the footnotes when I encounter them. I know it distracts from reading the

pranoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1142267077862433602006-03-13T11:22:00.000-05:002006-03-13T11:24:37.873-05:00

From the inimitable Mark Jason Dominus: Advice to people wishing to become smarter: Get in the habit of assuming that everything is more complex than you imagine.

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1136555002744182762006-01-06T08:40:00.000-05:002006-01-06T08:44:14.253-05:00

Jon Stewart to Host 2006 Academy Awards The inimitable Jon: Although, as an avid watcher of the Oscars, I can't help but be a little disappointed with the choice.

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1136554478776578022006-01-06T08:22:00.000-05:002006-01-06T08:34:38.786-05:00

From Bob Harris: Basic human decency shouldn't have to be an act of rebellion Incidentally, Bob Harris has appeared on my favorite game show Jeopardy! more than a dozen times, most recently in the 2002 "Million-Dollar Masters" tournament and the 2005 Ultimate Tourament of Champions.

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1133368850342245912005-11-30T11:29:00.000-05:002005-11-30T11:47:20.886-05:00

I am probably the 3,232,456th person to blog this, but Firefox 1.5 is finally out after three release candidates. Go get it! From Mozillazine announcement: Firefox 1.5 introduces several new features, including an improved software update system, faster Back / Forward page navigation, a new options to clear private browsing data, drag-and-drop reordering of browser tabs, a redesigned Options/

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1132319192713722002005-11-18T07:59:00.000-05:002005-11-18T08:11:47.476-05:00

While I was reading Practical Common Lisp, I found the following footnote. The venerable "hello, world" predates even the classic Kernighan and Ritchie C book that played a big role in its popularization. The original "hello, world" seems to have come from Brian Kernighan's "A Tutorial Introduction to the Language B" that was part of the Bell Laboratories Computing Science Technical Report #8:

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1132244220247148152005-11-17T10:55:00.000-05:002005-11-18T08:10:21.766-05:00

Mark Pilgrim's upcoming book Greasemonkey Hacks includes 100 Greasemonkey scripts. My POST Interceptor script is one of them. I am honored to be included in this excellent book, and in the company of such excellent scripts as, Book Burro. Preorder at Amazon

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1126875351432456752005-09-16T08:36:00.000-04:002005-09-16T08:58:40.890-04:00

Heard about Flock, the New Kid on the Browser Block via the Greasemonkey mailing list. I have read a few months ago about Bart Decrem starting a new venture called Round Two to develop Improved Firefox. It seems Round Two has become Flock now. Flock home page says: Flock has landed. We're introducing the world's most innovative social browsing experience. We call it the two-way web. Over the

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1115750755328954762005-05-10T14:24:00.000-04:002005-05-10T14:47:41.266-04:00

I wrote my biggest Greasemonkey user script yet after writing several small ones. This one I named as POST Interceptor. This is inspired by TamperIE Web Security tool, which works with IE only. I have had to use this quite bit recently for security testing of web applications. I wanted something like it for Firefox and started working on extending the excellent LiveHTTPHeaders extension (it

pranoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1111601222513903052005-03-23T12:53:00.000-05:002005-03-23T13:07:46.830-05:00

It's been a while since I updated this blog (more than a month). Things have been very busy of late. I haven't had chance to do much with Greasemonkey yet, but I had occasion to use it at work, to get around a coupld of annoying screens in the apps that I work on. So, I wrote a very short Greasemonkey user script to automatically submit whenever those screens came up. I showed it to a couple of

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1108576839154054062005-02-16T13:00:00.000-05:002005-02-16T13:07:44.416-05:00

Michal Guerquin attempts to estimate the storage capacity of Google Maps in How big is the world?, and extrapolates for the capacity needed to show the whole world. He concludes: Assuming a modest 1 byte/6 pixels compression ratio for LZW-encoded GIF format tiles, the storage required would be 50-70 trillion pixels * (1 byte/6 pixels) = 8 to 11 TB.

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1108504024165311292005-02-15T16:47:00.000-05:002005-02-15T17:57:56.503-05:00

Follower commented on my previous post and pointed to the latest in Google Maps hacking, which is injecting external scripts into Google Maps page using the Inject External File Bookmarklet. This is exactly what Greasemonkey does and, I might add, in a much more automatic fashion. So, I took Follower's RouteFollow script and, with a few modifications, made a Greasemonkey user script out of it.

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1108396709213498692005-02-14T10:58:00.000-05:002005-02-14T10:58:29.213-05:00

Wikified Google Maps Hacking page

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1108395316321974952005-02-14T10:35:00.000-05:002005-02-17T23:21:27.196-05:00

There's been a flurry of hacking as soon as Google Maps (beta!)was released. There was the usual analysis of how the whole thing was being pulled off by Google. Then the real hacking began. First, there were bookmarklets by "follower", to pan the map automatically to follow the route, and then moving an image of little man along the path. Several others chipped in with improved versions

pranoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1108099524515420842005-02-11T00:25:00.000-05:002005-02-11T00:25:24.516-05:00

Arve Bersvendsen discovered how all-powerful and all-knowing Google is! Google Maps find Weapons of Mass Destruction

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1108071094004868162005-02-10T16:31:00.000-05:002005-02-10T16:31:34.003-05:00

Nice explanation of how Google Maps were done. as simple as possible, but no simpler: Mapping Google

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1107975579037319142005-02-09T13:59:00.000-05:002005-02-09T14:00:43.100-05:00

Adblock (an excellent Firefox extension) comes to the rescue for fixing the IDN spoofing vulnerability. Enable Site Blocking in Adblock Preferences. Add the following filter: /[^\x20-\xFF]/ That's it! Tech.Life.Blogged | Workaround for IDN Spoofing Issue

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1107963647556571482005-02-09T10:21:00.000-05:002005-02-09T10:42:27.876-05:00

I love Google Maps (currently in beta). I have been a long-time user of Yahoo! Maps and like it for their trademark minimal look without all the crap compared to other mapping sites. I also like their SmartView feature, where local businesses on the map are highlighted. But Google Maps won me over. It looks like they get their from NavTeq (same as Yahoo). Things I like: The maps look

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1107958427090496452005-02-09T09:13:00.000-05:002005-02-09T09:16:04.640-05:00

It appears that the suggested about:config fix for the IDN exploit is not permanent. Tech.Life.Blogged talks about a Permanent Fix for the Shmoo Group exploit, but updates that this "permanent" fix is doesn't stick after installing a new extension. Let's see how long it takes for the Mozilla folks to come up with a real fix.

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1107792913186767202005-02-07T11:15:00.000-05:002005-02-07T11:15:13.186-05:00

Beware of Unicode characters in URLs. Mozilla/Firefox has a workaround by setting a config parameter. Ironically, IE doesn't let this attack through due to its inadequate support for Internationalized Domain Names. Courtesy Jason

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1107467855293830292005-02-03T16:57:00.000-05:002005-02-03T16:57:35.293-05:00

Wired magazine has a cover story The Firefox Explosion with Blake Ross on the cover.

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1106151529951076522005-01-19T11:18:00.000-05:002005-01-19T11:18:49.950-05:00

Excellent cartoon by Mark Fiore about unrealized US foreign aid pledges: Short Attention Span Nation Presents ... Foreign Aid!

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1105566989201189052005-01-12T16:56:00.000-05:002005-01-12T16:56:29.200-05:00

An Acehnese man swept out to sea by the tsunami has been rescued two full weeks after the wave destroyed his home town. Ari Afrizal had lived on makeshift rafts and a leaky fishing boat until he was spotted by an Arab container ship at midday on Sunday. Tsunami man's two-week sea ordeal (BBC News)

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1105457434891874062005-01-11T10:30:00.000-05:002005-01-11T10:30:34.890-05:00

Long-term exposure to American culture may be hazardous to immigrants' health. A new study found that obesity is relatively rare in the foreign-born until they have lived in the United States -- the land of drive-thrus, remote controls and double cheeseburgers -- for more than 10 years. Only 8 percent of immigrants who had lived in the United States for less than a year were obese, but

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1104442816109541692004-12-30T16:40:00.000-05:002004-12-30T16:42:28.013-05:00

The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Boing Boing reports about Updates on Tsunami from bloggers in India and Sri Lanka. The Command Post blogs about How to Help.

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1104427877847586302004-12-30T13:31:00.000-05:002004-12-30T16:42:55.503-05:00

Cheese and Crackers: Tsunami Video collects links to several video clips of the disaster. More from Austin's Blog

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1104243373065456262004-12-28T09:16:00.000-05:002004-12-28T09:18:43.350-05:00

My visited countries map: create your own visited country map

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1103816444082735252004-12-23T10:40:00.000-05:002004-12-23T10:40:44.083-05:00

There are quite a few links that I haven't come across in Jason Kottke's The Best Links 2004. Lotsa reading to do. So little time. :(

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1103663788406860102004-12-21T16:16:00.000-05:002004-12-21T16:16:28.406-05:00

TorgoX (1933) presents Stephen Hawking reads Finnegans Wake (mp3, about 1.3MB)

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1103662438650557302004-12-21T15:53:00.000-05:002004-12-21T15:53:58.650-05:00

Wonderful cartoon

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1103661968282409392004-12-21T15:46:00.000-05:002004-12-21T15:46:08.283-05:00

«... kids don't study poetry just because they're going to grow up to be poets. It's about a habit of mind. Your mind doesn't think abstractly unless it's asked to - and it needs to be asked to from a relatively young age. The rigor and logic that goes into math is a good way for your brain to be trained.» Well said, Miss Collins!

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1103661769594271652004-12-21T15:42:00.000-05:002004-12-21T15:42:49.593-05:00

Conversational Reading: When You Have Too Many Books

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1102868471823559032004-12-12T11:21:00.000-05:002004-12-12T11:21:11.823-05:00

I am not a big fan of Carnatic style of Indian Classical music, but I've always liked M.S. Subbulakshmi. She is no more. A voice that enchanted

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1102363546888230412004-12-06T15:05:00.000-05:002004-12-06T15:05:46.886-05:00

And, here's the list of 100 Notable Books of the Year, from The New York Times

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1102361483665536182004-12-06T14:31:00.000-05:002004-12-06T14:31:23.666-05:00

The Economist chooses the best Books of the year 2004

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1102095961419579032004-12-03T13:46:00.000-05:002004-12-03T12:53:10.730-05:00

Yesterday, I caught part of NPR's Day To Day program and heard the segment Brain Scans Make for More Accurate Lie Detector Tests where Ira Flatow talked about a recent study. According to this study, the brain works harder when telling lies than when telling truth. No wonder, being a president feels like "Hard Work" for Dubya with all the lies he had to tell in the past four years!

pranoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1100288326177694322004-11-12T14:36:00.000-05:002004-11-12T14:38:46.176-05:00

Firefox 1.0 is out! Hooray!

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1099940384634824142004-11-08T13:59:00.000-05:002004-11-08T13:59:44.633-05:00

Funny and sad!

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1099940226893868142004-11-08T13:57:00.000-05:002004-11-08T13:57:06.893-05:00

Daniel Gross of Slate: «At least they don't have to clean up the Bush fiscal catastrophe»

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1099938947400244752004-11-08T13:35:00.000-05:002004-11-08T13:40:12.340-05:00

In Florida: «In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry. In Dixie County, with 9,676 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1099688738200716332004-11-05T16:05:00.000-05:002004-11-08T13:38:56.046-05:00

Britain's Daily Mirror said: How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB? [via plasticbag.org]

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1099496701099170992004-11-03T10:45:00.000-05:002004-11-03T18:08:15.580-05:00

I am too depressed to write my own thoughts. So I am going to cheat a little bit and quote Simon Jessey: «Four years from now, America will look very different. Huge spending on the armed forces and their weaponry, together with tax cuts and fiscal mismanagement will deepen an already massive budget deficit. The nation's standing in the eyes of the rest of the world will not have improved.

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1099342289920189682004-11-01T15:51:00.000-05:002004-11-01T15:53:31.450-05:00

100 Facts and 1 Opinion — The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration (found via Russel Beattie)

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1099067229730735912004-10-29T13:27:00.000-04:002004-10-29T12:33:14.843-04:00

In the article Firefox aims for 10 percent of Web surfers, ZDNet says: «ZDNet UK's own figures show that since the beginning of this year, there has been an increase in the percentage of site visitors using a Mozilla browser. In February, about 9 percent of site visitors were using a Mozilla-based browser; this increased to 19 percent in October. Over the same period, IE use decreased from 88

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1098821911342695292004-10-26T16:18:00.000-04:002004-10-26T16:18:31.343-04:00

Two cool products from Google: Picasa is a digital photo organizing tool and Hello is an IM client to share photos with chat buddies. Too bad, they are windows-only.

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1098812449845482632004-10-26T13:40:00.000-04:002004-10-26T13:41:39.053-04:00

Richard Soderberg demonstrates how a few disparate (and free) web services can be integrated into an e-commerce site. Very Cool! A testament to the power of the Web.

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1098808486026577312004-10-26T12:34:00.000-04:002004-10-26T12:34:46.026-04:00

Both Kerry and Bush are related going back several generations ago (16th century) according to this ancestry.com genealogical chart.

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1098459226663583112004-10-22T11:33:00.000-04:002004-10-22T12:10:09.526-04:00

The Brad Blog has this story about how the Whitehouse might be attempting to "clean" the site up by removing some audio/video clips. Some commenters suggested that it's a moot point since the Wayback Machine archives everything anyway, and others corrected them saying multimedia content is not archived. More interesting for me was one of the comments which said: «Even for HTML files (such

pranoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1095427013807034272004-09-17T09:58:00.000-04:002004-09-17T12:04:55.406-04:00

Eliyon provides an interesting service to search people. They scrape information of the web and newsgroups and builds profiles of people. There seem to be some limitations. When you search for Larry Wall, it comes up with 98 results (of which 20 are displayed) supposedly corresponding to 98 different Larry Walls, which is clearly not true. At least three of the first twenty profiles belong to

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1095098918247621892004-09-13T14:08:00.000-04:002004-09-13T15:04:04.116-04:00

18 degrees North, 80 degrees East is the confluence point closest to my hometown. The Degree Confluence Project is really cool. «The goal of the project is to visit each of the latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world, and to take pictures at each location.» So far: «3411 successful, primary, confluences, 314 secondary confluences, 239 incomplete confluences, 5473

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1093956666096271482004-08-31T08:47:00.000-04:002004-08-31T08:55:30.826-04:00

Charley is not even an old news yet, but now we have Frances expected to hit South Florida. I am not normally too worried about hurricanes. The fact that I have not yet experienced a major hurricane personally has perhaps much to do with this complacency. This one is starting to worry me. Especially since we are going out of town for a long-awaited trip to Tempe, AZ. Sa is scheduled to

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1093880076097426922004-08-30T11:30:00.000-04:002004-08-30T11:34:36.096-04:00

Just placed an order for the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250 card. I plan to install in my Linux PC (AMD Duron 600 running debian unstable). I know, the system is a bit skimpy for any video stuff, but I am going to try and see if I can make a go at it. I will be installing MythTV. Let's see how it goes.

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1092427282032213092004-08-13T15:53:00.000-04:002004-08-13T16:01:22.033-04:00

Latest position of Bonnie and Charley is here.

pranoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6886646.post-1083592985527694172004-05-03T10:02:00.000-04:002004-05-03T10:07:19.500-04:00

First Post.

pranoreply@blogger.com0