Yesterday, I saw Star Trek. I’ve been waiting for this movie ever since I heard it was being made. I had pretty high hopes for it and felt that the franchise needed redemption after the steaming pile of crap that was Nemesis (what an ignominious exit for the TNG crew). That being said, I was…
Running the JavaFX 1.1 SDK on Linux
This is an update to my instructions on running the JavaFX 1.0 SDK on Linux. Those instructions do not work on the dmg image for the 1.1 version of the SDK. Mike (thanks Mike!) posted a comment on that blog mentioning a small change that needed to be made. To get JavaFX 1.1 on Linux,…
An update to running aterm (or any other X app) rootless, without a DOS console on Cygwin
A while ago, I wrote up a quick guide about running X/Windows applications (specifically, aterm) without root windows on Windows, using Cygwin. Recently I tried to set it up again and I realized that some of the information is slightly out of date. I’m also endeavoring to write a better guide. I’m assuming that you…
Apache2 and .htaccess with mod_rewrite on Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron)
Apparently the default settings for .htaccess files and URL rewrites in Ubuntu (8.04 anyway) is kinda jacked. Apache wasn’t seeing my .htaccess files, and even after setting up the configuration correctly, I was getting Internal Server (500) errors from .htaccess files. The default setting for Apache2 on Ubuntu for .htaccess is “ignore it”. You need…
The Battlestar Galactica Series Finale was Frakking Awesome, ok?
I know the finale was broadcast last weekend, but I didn’t get to see it until a few days ago. If you haven’t seen it yet (or if you haven’t seen the series at all and are planning to start), don’t read any further because there are spoilers! The re-imagined Battlestar Galactica earned itself a…
How I Joined the Army, Went to War, and Came Back
This is an article that I originally wrote for Anjali, a publication from KHNA (Kerala Hindus of North America). I was asked to write an article describing my experiences in the Army and this is what I came up with. It eventually ended up being a lot longer than I planned. How I Joined the…
Jones Day are a bunch of litigious bastards
A tiny startup called BlockShopper was bullied by a large law-firm (also known as a bunch of litigious bastards) into amending their hyperlink policy. Yes, you read that right. They were threatened and sued for linking to the law-firm’s website in a manner that apparently didn’t please them. See, the dumbasses didn’t like the fact…
Creating a custom SELECT tag with OPTGROUP in Grails
I’ve recently started working with Groovy on Grails at work. Groovy is a dynamic language that runs on the JVM (Java Virtual Machine), and Grails is a high-productivity open-source web-application framework that leverages the Groovy language. Grails follows the “convention over configuration” principle, taking away a lot of the grunt work that goes into creating…
Apple: Blurring the Line Between Hackers and Hipsters
Yesterday, while wrestling with my Windows XP machine to make it do dual-monitor display properly (I can’t get it to set my LCD as primary display), I ended up hosing the registry completely. It took me about two more hours to fix the system and get it back to where it was. During this whole…
The State of Computer Engineering
I was having a conversation with a few good friends (old college buddies, and fellow nerds) over a couple of beers a little while ago. We mainly reminisced about certain key classes we took while we were at ASU, and also about the state of CS and CSE graduates today. Indeed, the very nature of…