De Vermis Misteriis

Mint.com acquired by Intuit

2009-09-15T01:29:00.002-04:00

This is sad news. While early Intuit was a pioneer of personal finance software, currently the company is a pale shadow of former self, driven primarily by greed and an urge to milk customers for as much money as possible. Annual rehashes of the buggy and bloated piece of software, each one with a time bomb to ensure customers continue to pay, in-program ads for those who have already paid, no visible progress over the last 5-8 years. Mac version that is a joke. You name it...

I’ve joined Mint precisely because it was an opposite of Intuit/Quicken. What an irony!

As much as I like Mint, I don’t hold my breath about it’s future, no matter how rosy the former owners' prognosis is. As mentioned before, Intuit is greed-driven like few other companies. Free Mint cannibalizes the sales of one of it’s cash cows (albeit the smallest of the three) – Quicken. How long will it take before Intuit decides to increase “synergy” by limiting free features and offering a Mint Deluxe? I think, not long.

Обалдели родители

2007-12-16T11:57:00.000-05:00

Женька (пересказывая братику свежепрочитанную "Сказку о Рыбаке и Рыбке"): "Сидит она в тереме. На ногах у неё сафьяновые сапожки. Обалдел дедушка..."

Время переходить на марсианский

2007-10-11T00:29:00.000-04:00

Игра "Gazprom"

2007-06-04T15:51:00.000-04:00

Идея игры состоит в следующем: Есть Россия с Газпромом, который вырабатывает... м-м-м... газ. Россия окружена государствами, которым она газ поставляет. Все окружающие государства - vragi или таковые же, временно прикидывающиеся друзьями (но рано или поздно показывающие свою личину.)

Газпром прокладывает трубы и устранавливает на трубах вентили. И то и другое стоит денег, требуя тщательного планирования трубопроводной сети. Прокладка труб должна быть достаточно дорогой, чтобы предотвратить ситуацию, когда у каждой страны есть "своя" труба и/или "свой" вентиль. Цель игры - обеспечить газом друзей и закрыть вентили для vragov. Как отключение друзей, так и неотключение врагов чреваты снижением avtoritetа.

Дополнительные кунштюки: otkat за беспроблемные поставки, veernye отключения т.н. "друзьям," возможность сбросить на соседнее государство бомбу.

ЕГЭ

2007-05-27T12:42:00.000-04:00

Интересно, на чем же я пролетел?..

Мой результат теста
"Проверь себя: Сдай ЕГЭ!"

Александр Беликов!

Твердая четверка. Если вы взрослый и уже давно окончили школу, значит, вы, видимо, много читаете или у вас гуманитарная профессия. Если вы юноша, готовящийся к выпускным в школе, вам стоит полистать учебник, чтобы закрасить кое-какие пробелы в знаниях.

[пройти тест]

Кстати, обращаясь к собеседнику, следует писать "Вы" (пример того, как не надо - здесь). Так что авторов теста - тоже в детский сад.

Gap.com IT Development for dummies

2007-05-26T23:43:00.000-04:00

Thank you Gap, for a wonderful offer!

I am going to pass on it, unfortunately. Not sure if I want the same coding monkey, who programmed this banner in the first place to write logic for my store card balance management.

Besides, I'd rather opt for the card that would allow me to save up to $I.nf instead.

Products that suck: Frog Pod by Boon

2007-01-26T13:30:00.000-05:00

There are crappy products and there are ones that are outright dangerous. Boon's Frog Pod squarely falls into the second category.

The idea is nice: instead of stuffing child's washing accessories around the tub or on unseemly shelves, one would use a cute frog-like container. It looks nice and it keeps things tidy and my kid absolutely loved the way it hung on the wall. Not bad for thirty bucks.

I followed fairly detailed instructions on surface preparation and mounting to ensure that there are no surprises. Friendly manual suggests that the Frog is "hung up out of the reach of children," which is exactly what I did. The container was loaded with 2 small shampoo bottles, two rubber duckies, and a small washcloth.

Well, lo and behold - today, 5 days since I mounted the thing, I was greeted with a loud boom from my bathroom. Turns out, the damn thing came crashing down. It was mounted as instructed. It was not overloaded. The surface was prepared as expected. And yet it fell down.

I am very lucky that my daughter was not in the bathtub at the time - she could've been seriously injured. Because of this, Boon should feel very lucky as well, otherwise my lawyer would be already calling them.

Bottom line: unless you like things coming down on you in a surprise fashion, do not buy the Frog Pod. Alternatively, you can still buy it but do not follow the mounting instructions and opt for screw-based mounting. It is much more work, but your kids will thank you.

Been there, done that...

2006-06-26T13:42:00.000-04:00

create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Joel - good! Microsoft Live Search - bad!

2006-03-08T11:49:00.000-05:00

Microsoft Live Search is now... uhm... live. Naturally, I've tried it out - and lost interest promptly after the first query.

Microsoft is clearly trying very hard to replicate Google success. The problem is, part of the Google appeal is clean and usable UI. Unfortunately, Microsoft Search folks still don't get it. Branding and replication of [rather garish] desktop UI elements pretty much ruin the experience.

To substantiate and quantify my qualms, here is a list of things that made me think this round of improvements is still years behind Google in terms of both UI and usability:

The results are shown in a scrollable subwindow inside the main window - so that we could always see the footer. That's right, one thing we should see at all times is the copyright statement. I think, Microsoft people should go further and add the disclaimer as the first result for any search.
The scrollbar for the results window is very cute. There is only one problem with it - it no longer driven by my mouse scrollwheel. So, all the user experience with scrolling things using the scrollwheel is out of the window. Welcome back to the glorious days of Windows 3.0. (Granted, I'm using Firefox in Linux, but I am yet to see another site where I couldn't scroll things with my scrollwheel!)
The toolbar Live Search sports is more distracting: of course, some people will find the panel with shadow transition effects cute, but in my opinion it loses to the clean and unadorned links Google sports.
Another "cute" feature - a scroller in the upper right corner, that apparently controls how much detail is displayed for each result. It took me some time to figure out what that thing does, especially since controlling it also controlled the number of search results. There is no tooltip, no lable - most users will not have a clue what this thing does.
Finally, this is highly subjective, but I don't appreciate the Gray on White color scheme for the Search results details. I find it not as readable as Black on White used by Google: I do feel a significant eyestrain when reading the results.

I find it extremely ironic that this event concided with another excellent Joel's article on software usability. The bottom line of the article: Something is usable if it behaves as expected. Microsoft Live Search is a living proof to that statement. It does not behave as expected, which makes it at least not as usable as other offerings. Which means, it will continue to lag in terms of user share.

I understand that Microsoft will eventually fix these bugs and will become at least as usable as Google. Still, this is pretty sad: the company that defines the UI on 98% of the desktops in the world is incapable of replicating the usability of a white webpage with a bunch of search results on it! This might explain why people have to curse through changed UI paradigms every time a new version of Windows or Office is released.

Improving Wireless Network Throughput

2005-08-04T22:28:00.000-04:00

Forget MIMO. Donate your Linksys speed booster to charity. Now you can boost you wireless network speed dramatically using the scientifically proven technology.

"..WiFi Speed Spray™ can overcome the effects of pollution, increase fidelity, and provide you with the fastest wireless data transfer possible. Compatible with ALL 802.XXx standards!"

I hope it is patent pending.

From the Standardized Test for Immigration Officers

2005-06-12T14:32:00.000-04:00

Question 106: A person is approaching you, requesting entry to the U.S. (see picture). His inventory includes the following items:

a homemade sword
a hatchet
a knife
brass knuckles
a chain saw stained with something looking as blood

Your actions are (choose one):

Greet the person welcome and let him in.
Detain the person based on the inventory above and send an inquiry to the Royal Canadian Police.
Confiscate the items, briefly question the person and let him in.

Correct choice: 3.

Running SuSE Linux 9.3 on ASUS Pundit

2005-06-09T06:37:00.000-04:00

Recently, I have finally decided to upgrade our home server. My wife's old Dell Dimension 8200 that has been in this role for a while would move to a summer house as a main PC and I would get a new server.

After shopping around, I finally ended up with the following do-it-yourself configuration:

ASUS Pundit barebone.
Intel Celeron D 2.4GHz
512 MB of RAM
Seagate 300GB hard drive
Lite-On DVD writer.

Using ASUS Pundit as barebone seemed like a good idea. It is small, elegant, inexpensive, and it was said to have a good Linux support. The entire configuration cost $400+, which is significantly lower, compared to the Dell and HP prices for similar systems.

Much to my surprise, the configuration and installation was not quite as seamless as I expected it to be. At this point of time I usually take for granted the fact that Linux installs and runs seamlessly on most of hardware available. Installing Linux on my new server turned out to be more challenging and finding the solution was not a metter of a simple Google search.

Noise level

I was a bit scared after reading a couple reports about the supposedly loud noise emitted by the CPU fan. The fan turned out to be quite loud indeed but only when running at top speed. Setting the BIOS option for Q-FAN on make the fan go quiet. I am yet to see the amount of number crunching I have to run on the machine to get the fan loud again.

Wrong VCORE temperature

Turns out that Pundit's default BIOS revision (1007) does not play nice with Celeron D CPUs, which results in a rather ominous BIOS halt with a message about a hardware problem. The problem reported is wrong VCORE temperature read by BIOS. The solution is to update the BIOS to revision 1010.

BIOS update

The Pundit's manual is very detailed on the BIOS update procedure and it clearly explains each step of it: how to copy the update file to the floppy disk and how to tell the AFLASH program (or to the BIOS update routine) what the filename is. There is only one tiny problem: the system does not have a floppy drive!

The solution, graciously provided by Asus support, is to use the Asus Update program supplied on the CD (and not documented anywhere). Unfortunately, in order to use the program, one has to install Windows first, but the inconvenience is minor, especially when compared to other options, like trying to create a CD-ROM bootable into MS-DOS and posing as A: drive.

Disk geometry problems

It turns out, SuSE 9.3 installer has a bug when dealing with SIS-based chipsets (like the one in Pundit). As a result, the installer kept using wrong geometry information for my hard drive causing dozens of scary IDE errors and telling me that my hard drive is actually only half the size of what I thought it was (interestingly, none of the other Linux distributions, including Knoppix, Fedora Core 3, and even SuSE 9.1 exhibited this problem). The solution is to pass the option insmod=ide-generic as a boot parameter when starting the installer. See also SuSE Support Page.

Power management

One thing that still doesn't work is reboots and poweroffs. At the point where the PC is to be rebooted of turned off, the system locks up. I have tried various combinations of apm and acpi options but with no success so far. I would appreciate if someone suggests a way to deal with it.

Conclusion

Overall, Asus Pundit is a nice little box ideal for a small home server or an HTPC. Once I got the problems above resolved, I was good to go. and my new server keeps on humming in the corner. So far I am pretty happy with it and if it keeps that way, I will be soon buying another one for a home HTPC.

Will it cost us to develop for Windows Mobile 5.0?

2005-05-22T23:41:00.000-04:00

Smartphone Thoughts is running a rather lengthy discussion about whether the development tools for Windows Mobile 5.0 are not going to be free. The Slashdot crowd has immediately jumped onto the issue as usual blaming Microsoft of a vile conspiracy.

The core of the issue is the fact that Microsoft is trying to unify all of its development tools underneath the Visual Studio 2005 umbrella. Since Visual Studio is not freely distributed (unlike the Embedded Visual Tools development system), the argument goes, there will no longer be any free development for the Windows Mobile platform.

I find the argument flawed for a number of reasons. If we look at the trend, there are actually many more free development tools available from Microsoft compared to the past. In fact, looking specifically at CE development tools: in order to develop for Windows CE some 3-4 years ago one had:

To acquire a Visual C++ development system, and
To purchase an add-on for Windows CE development.

Nowadays, one just has to spend 15 minutes downloading eVC++ 4 for free. Same goes for Windows-oriented development. Same for dozens of other SDKs. There are ways to develop for each and every Microsoft platform using free tools from Microsoft.

What is going to happen actually, in my opinion, will be similar to the situation with development tools for .NET framework:

There will be a freely available SDK with a set of tools allowing free development for Windows Mobile 5.0 platform just like there is a free .NET SDK with a set of compilers and tools allowing developers to create .NET applications.
VS.NET 2005 will be positioned for Windows Mobile 5.0 development in the exactly same manner VS is positioned for Windows and .NET development. That is, it will not be the only tool available for such development but the sheer convenience, integration and automation will appeal to a broad segment of ISVs compelling them to purchase it instead of going with free tools.

Now on a personal note. I think, I am willing to pay $299 if this would give me a single tool that would provide coverage for all Pocket PC and Windows Mobile target platforms without the sheer madness of having to install eVC++ 3, eVC++ 4, VS 6, and VS.NET 2003 (let alone a half dozen of platform SDKs). This alone is well worth $299. ;-)

RTVi

2005-04-20T07:23:00.000-04:00

Телегадюшник под названием RTVi не перестает умилять. Во вчерашнем выпуске новостей - опрос мнения телезрителей: "Одобряете ли вы выбор кардиналов в отношении нового Папы?" (я не шучу)

Как оказалось, 63 процента виртуального Брайтон-Бич решения кардиналов не одобряют...

30-day Challenge

2005-04-20T07:07:00.000-04:00

I discovered Steve Pavlina's weblog by accident about one year ago and have been an avid reader of his articles ever since. I have been constantly striving to incorporate some of his tips into my own "workflow."

Steve has recently published an article titled "30 Days to Success." His idea is very simple: it is pretty difficult to commit oneself to drop a bad habit or to acquire a good one with no time horizon. Instead, he suggests having a "free trial" period for 30 days, which is much more achievable. After 30 days, the thinking goes, the new habit becomes a second nature, so it would be much easier to stick to it.

I am going to take Steve up for his challenge. For the next 30 days, I will go to bed no later than 12am and I will also work out no less than 3 times a week. I have been trying to stick to these rules since time immemorial and I never managed to last more than a couple of days. Let's see how it will pan out now.

What will you succeed at in the next 30 days?

Золотой фонд сионизма

2005-01-12T22:51:00.000-05:00

"Сионизм явление повседневное в жизни Новосибирской области". Ну разве не прелесть? Я думал, такие мастодонты уже повывелись - ан нет, есть Frauen в русских селеньях.

Оттуда же: "Чиновники-расхитители - золотой фонд сионизма." - это хоть сейчас на плакат. Интересно, взялся бы кто-нибудь в каком-нибудь Cafepress сделать пару десятков футболок с данным лозунгом? Я бы точно купил.

Глазами Инопланетянина

2004-12-10T22:39:00.000-05:00

Когда-нибудь инопланетяне, роясь на пепелище планеты Земля, проанализируют электронную почту, дабы составить коллективный образ Человека. Получившийся персонаж будет выглядеть следующим образом: жирный, похотливый, лысеющий козел, с крошечным членом, депрессиями, долгами, постоянно покупающий дома в рассрочку и страхующий автомобили...

De Vermis Misteriis

2004-11-14T21:57:00.000-05:00

Поиск по вышеупомянутому названию (Lovecraft rulez!) принес ссылку на сайт молодого эстонского художника/фотографа Dante.AD. Детям, беременным женщинам, и прочим слабонервным товарищам смотреть не рекомендуется - слишком пугающе: De Vermis Misteriis, El ni?o de los peces (сразу стоит сказать, что к Лавкрафту данные работы никакого отношения не имеют.)

"Да-да-да-да-да"

2004-11-14T21:54:00.000-05:00

..было сегодня сказано Женькой - ровно за день до шестимесячного юбилея. Пока были сделаны демонстрационные звонки всем родственникам (несмотря на 5 часов утра в Москве), первые слова плавно трансформировались в "дай-дай-дай." И правильно - надо приучать родителей смолоду.

"Положите под мусорный ящик шестьсот рублей, иначе будет плохо"

2004-11-07T21:27:00.000-05:00

Phisher'ы "из Ситибанка" обрадовали следующим письмом (текст приводится дословно):

Subject: NOTE! Citibank account suspend in process

Dear Customer:

Recently there have been a large number of cyber attacks pointing our database servers. In order to safeguard your account, we require you to sign on immediately.

This personal check is requested of you as a precautionary measure and to ensure yourselves that everything is normal with your balance and personal information.

This process is mandatory, and if you did not sign on within the nearest time your account may be subject to temporary suspension.

Please make sure you have your Citibank(R) debit card number and your User ID and Password at hand.

Please use our secure counter server to indicate that you have signed on, please click the link bellow:

http://221.4.199.8/citiver/

!! Note that we have no particular indications that your details have been compromised in any way.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter and thank you for using Citibank(R)

Regards,

Citibank(R) Card Department

Грустно, господа, иметь дело с дилетантами...

Не забудем, не простим.

2004-11-06T19:20:00.000-05:00

И что интересно: почему-то именно либералам свойственнен пост-проигрышный трагизм. Республиканцы все-таки более прагматичны. А тут - траур, как будто Гитлер к власти пришел (некоторые и не стесняются, сравнивают именно с Гитлером). Коллега на работе: "Я в шоке. Оставьте меня, я не хочу об этом говорить!" Другая: "Я в серьезной депрессии. Подумываю о Prozac." Наверное, если бы я был республиканцем и проголосовал за Буша, они бы со мной разговаривать перестали, если не чего-то похуже.

В Салоне общий тон "Не забудем, не простим." Все делятся предсказаниями о скором конце света и посулами страшных проклятий, которыми обернутся следующие 4 года. Для людей истерического склада раздолье - это их время. Мать из Огайо: "..wondering how I was going to tell my daughters that Bush had won the election..." (детям 3 и 8 лет). Представляю, как на это отреагируют дети после многомесячной промывки мозгов. Давить таких матерей надо.

Одно радует: еще месяц-другой и все утихнет. Настрой на Апокалипсис уйдет под давлением новых животрепещущих проблем, которые нам преподнесут CNN, "Apprentice" и "20/20." И все вернется на круги своя.

На десерт - для тех, кто любит поиграть в солдатиков. Набор "Chechen Rebels". В составе набора: Wounded warlord Shamil Basaev, Fighter exposing cut off head, Latvian sniperwoman. Веселой вам игры.

"..То ли водка плохая стала..."

2004-10-21T16:35:00.000-04:00

1. В метро сидит негр, полностью экипированный в стиле Гетто - цепей немерянно, черный чулок на голове и т.п. С увлечением читает "Республику" Платона.

2. Поиск статьи по derivatives выдает следующую ссылку:

Дейноних

2004-10-07T07:46:00.000-04:00

Ребенок друзей (3 года) нигде не расстается с книгой о динозаврах. Книга называется "Динозавры: Полная Энциклопедия."

Глава "Дейноних":

"Немногие динозавры обладали таким смертоносным оружием, какое было у дейнониха - на втором пальце каждой его ступни рос ужасный серповидный коготь... Приблизившись к предполагаемой жертве дейноних набрасывался на нее сбоку и вспарывал ей живот или бок своими острыми серповидными когтями. После этого жертва (например, нарисованный здесь зефирозавр) в судорогах умирала."

Оттуда же - "Роковая случайность" - история про мусзавриху с двумя маленькими детенышами:

"Застигнув мусзавриху врасплох, хищник бросился на нее, укусив за бок. Шансов остаться в живых при нападении ставрикозавра у нее не было. И увы, детеныши пережили ее ненадолго."

Аннотация утверждает, что "прочитать книгу будет интересно и детям и взрослым."

2002-12-16T23:22:00.000-05:00

I guess, the best way to start a blog is to give some practical advice. And since I have just finished configuring my spanking new Logitech Wireless keyboard in linux, other people could find it helpful.

In short, the keyboard works in Linux right away (well, it's a damn keyboard, not a cold fusion reactor). The problem is, all these new keyboards sport a number of nice shortcut keys to do everyday things, like e-mail, web browsing, and media player control. While these keys are fairly trivial to configure in Windows, most Linux distributions don't like them right away.

The configuration process in Linux comprises two major stages:

Making the funky keys map to meaningful 'keysyms' (virtual symbols, X Window System uses for all keyboard handling). To do this, I tweaked my /etc/X11/XF86Config to change the keyboard model (a number of "extended" a.k.a. "internet-enabled" keyboards are already defined in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb/symbols/inet). My modifications look like this:
```
        Option  "XkbLayout"     "inet"

        Option  "XkbVariant"    "logiinetnav"
```
Now is the tricky part - making your window environment do things in response to those keysyms. This is highly specific on what your poison is. I'm a long-time KDE user, but it took me quite some googling in order to figure out how to configure this in KDE. Yes, it would've been to easy, if it was configured from the "keyboard shortcuts" section :-) . What one has to do is to create new items in menu editor (kmenuedit) and assign shortcuts to each new item. Thankfully, xmms and aumix are scriptable which allows us controlling them via shortcuts (run xmms --help and aumix -h to find the appropriate options).

And so, the Internet keys now work. That's a good thing (tm). The not-so-good thing is that my eyes are killing me today. This is weird - I spend less time in front of the computer and yet they ache more. I guess, eyedrops are no longer an option...

Finally, the link of the day: Yngwie Malmsteen: "You've released the f---ing fury!" (generously pointed out by F---ed Company).