Seth Keiper

This amazing letter, albeit long, is a deep insight to what was actually happening during the early 1960's. The struggle that was faced still goes on to this day but we cannot forget how far this world has come since then. Let's not forget the work that has been done. Do not ignore it and keep progressing.

Remember, there are no races…

Horrible. Very horrible. She was shot point blank in the head. Along with others shot. Please, read.

This guy is just a contractor and this isn't something he does for a living. But he sure has the groove and vibe. Got to love that. Definitely worth a listen.

Major Richard Winters died on January 2, 2011 at 92 years young. He wanted a private, unannounced funeral. Let's not forget this great man.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp!
And surely I'll be mine!
And we'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes
And pou'd the gowans fine.
We've wandered mony a weary foot,
Sin' auld lang syne.

We twa hae sported i' the burn,
From morning sun till dine,
But seas between us braid hae roared
Sin' auld lang syne.

And ther's a hand, my trusty friend,
And gie's a hand o' thine;
We'll tak' a right good willie-waught,,
For auld lang syne.

I am not even Scottish but that makes me want to wear a kilt, for bloody sake.

A defining moment that one becomes an adult is when he/she starts to put more back into their community than they take out of it.

This will revolutionize everything about DNA. Imagine the implications at hand.

From gizmag:

Sequencing an entire genome is currently a highly complex, time-consuming process – the DNA must be broken down into segments and replicated, utilizing chemicals that destroy the original sample. Scientists from Imperial College London, however, have just announced the development of a prototype device that could lead to technology capable of sequencing a human genome within minutes, at a cost of just a few dollars. By contrast, when sequencing of the genome of Dr. James Watson (co-discoverer of the structure of DNA) was completed in 2007, it had taken two years and cost US$1 million.

At the heart of the Imperial College device is a silicon chip, with a 50-nanometer nanopore bored through it. DNA strands are propelled at high speed through this hole, and get their coding sequence read by a “tunneling electrode junction” as they come out the other side. This junction consists of a 2-nanometer gap between two platinum wires, with an electrical current passing between them, across the gap. The current interacts with the unique electrical signal given off by each of the DNA strand’s base codes, and the resulting data is then processed by a computer to determine the complete genome sequence.

The chips are reportedly quite durable, standing up to repeated uses and washings with no loss in performance.

“We haven't tried it on a whole genome yet, but our initial experiments suggest that you could theoretically do a complete scan of the 3,165 million bases in the human genome within minutes, providing huge benefits for medical tests, or DNA profiles for police and security work,” said study co-author Dr. Joshua Edel. “It should be significantly faster and more reliable, and would be easy to scale up to create a device with the capacity to read up to 10 million bases per second, versus the typical 10 bases per second you get with the present day single molecule real-time techniques.”

While passing DNA strands through nanopores has shown promise as a genome-sequencing technique for some time now, this is reportedly the first time it has been paired up with such a fast and accurate reading system – the American creators of a similar system announced this August, however, might dispute that claim. In any case, a practical commercial device could still be up to ten years away.

“The next step will be to differentiate between different DNA samples and, ultimately, between individual bases within the DNA strand,” said study co-author Dr. Tim Albrecht. “I think we know the way forward, but it is a challenging project and we have to make many more incremental steps before our vision can be realized.”

The research was recently published in the journal Nano Letters.

From time to time, I tend to forget simple things, such as the exact syntax for creating a UTF8 database in MySQL.

Here is an example:

CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS `database_name` CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;


There we go.

Of course, you could just write your own spider/search engine. Not overly complex nor deeply involved. But what if you need it *now*?

Enter in Sphider. Sphider is a lightweight web spider and search engine written in PHP, using MySQL as its back end database. Also the html is templatable. And kicker: it is free and open source under the GPL license.

How to set this screaming application up? Very simple instructions for GNU/Linux:

1. wget http://www.sphider.eu/sphider-1.3.4.zip
2. unzip sphider-1.3.4.zip
3. mv sphider-1.3.4/ search/
4. edit the file: search/settings/database.php to use your database credentials and in mysql console, run: CREATE DATABASE `sphider`;
5. So the config file is writable: chmod 666 search/settings/conf.php
6. As a personal touch, I like to do: ln -s search/search.php search/index.php
7. You will need to edit the username and password defaults in search/admin/auth.php on lines 3 and 4, respectively.
8. Then in your favorite web browser, point to: http://yoursite.com/search/admin/install.php. This creates the SQL tables for the sphider database.
9. Follow the link to: http://yoursite.com/search/admin/admin.php.
10. Log in with your credentials.
11. Select the Settings tab.
12. Some of the key items to change on this are:
    • Administrator e-mail address
    • Temporary directory (this will need to be writable if you are not running under the www-data user)
    • Indexing settings:
      • PDF:
        1. Check the Index PDF files
        2. Input /usr/bin/pdftotext for Full executable path to PDF converter (check if you have this by doing: which pdftotext
      • Microsoft DOC:
        1. Check the Index DOC files
        2. Input /usr/bin/catdoc for Full executable path to catdoc converter (check if you have this by doing: which catdoc
      • XLS:
        1. Check the Index XLS files
        2. Input /usr/bin/xls2csv for Full executable path to XLS converter (check if you have this by doing: which xls2csv
      • PPT:
        1. Check the Index PPT files
        2. Input /usr/bin/catppt for Full executable path to PPT converter (check if you have this by doing: which catppt
    • Change the User agent string to your own desired setting. Most of the time, I set this to the domain name or landing URL for people who see your search engine in their logs.
    • Do not forget to select the Save settings submit button
13. Select the Index tab
14. Input your site's domain name. Remember, www.yoursite.com is not the same as subdomain.yoursite.com. Both have to be indexed separately.
15. Full indices seem to be the best, so I use that, personally.
16. Start Indexing!
17. Now you have a search engine that you can templatize. Take the search form and put it anywhere on your site or include it through php's include() for ever page.
18. More information is available for sphider in their documentation.

Nine hundred billion dollars. This is the rough amount for this year's (2009) stimulus bill. To put this into perspective, imagine since the beginning of the Common Era (not counting leap years), that there was one million USD spent for every day of those years, 365 days a year, until 2009. That would be roughly 733,285 days. Now, multiply that by one million USD and you would get: $733,285,000,000 (USD).  A lot of money to hand out, especially when there are programs it would be funding that reek of pork:

• $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film.
• $650 million for the digital television converter box coupon program.
• $2.5 million in hard-earned taxpayer money for a "Waterfront Duck Pond Park" in Hercules, California.
• $200,000 for a dog park in Hercules, California.
• $2 billion earmark to re-start FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois that the Department of Energy defunded last year because it said the project was inefficient.
• $88 million for the Coast Guard to design a new polar icebreaker (arctic ship).
• $448 million for constructing the Department of Homeland Security headquarters.
• $248 million for furniture at the new Homeland Security headquarters.
• $600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees.
• $400 million for the Centers for Disease Control to screen and prevent STD's.
• $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs.
• $125 million for the Washington sewer system.
• $150 million for Smithsonian museum facilities.
• $1 billion for the 2010 Census, which has a projected cost overrun of $3 billion.
• $75 million for "smoking cessation activities."
• $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges.
• $75 million for salaries of employees at the FBI.
• $25 million for tribal alcohol and substance abuse reduction.
• $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas.
• $6 billion to turn federal buildings into "green" buildings.
• $500 million for state and local fire stations.
• $650 million for wildland fire management on forest service lands.
• $1.2 billion for "youth activities," including youth summer job programs.
• $88 million for renovating the headquarters of the Public Health Service.
• $412 million for CDC buildings and property.
• $500 million for building and repairing National Institutes of Health facilities in Bethesda, Maryland.
• $160 million for "paid volunteers" at the Corporation for National and Community Service.
• $5.5 million for "energy efficiency initiatives" at the Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration.
• $850 million for Amtrak.
• $100 million for reducing the hazard of lead-based paint.
• $75 million to construct a "security training" facility for State Department Security officers when they can be trained at existing facilities of other agencies.
• $110 million to the Farm Service Agency to upgrade computer systems.
• $200 million in funding for the lease of alternative energy vehicles for use on military installations
• $15 million for the Midway Park Family Life Center in Euless, Texas, which, you'll be glad to note, includes both a senior center and aquatic facility.
• $9.5 million for a new sports complex is "needed" by Natchez, Mississippi "which would allow our city to host major regional and national sports tournaments."
• $20 million to help "develop a 60 acre multi-use sports field complex" in Henderson, Nevada
• $15 million for a sports park in Brigham City, Utah.
• $4 million to expand its tennis center in Arlington, Texas.
• $15 million for a "Moore Park Community Center, Tennis Center and Day Care" facility in Miami, Florida.
• $3.6 million to build a covered basketball court and a new tennis court at Robert King High Park, Miami, Florida.
• $94 million for the Orange Bowl parking garage, Miami, Florida.
• $7.6 million for a "Life Style Center" in La Porte, Texas.
• $1 million for Fruitvale Latino Cultural and Performing Arts Center in Oakland, California.

Some of these projects make sense in a stable, growing economy. But,... in these times of economic troubles (with more news of 598,000 jobs being cut in January 2009), are any of these purposed projects sane? Did they really just request $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture films? Does US taxpayers need to be spending their taxes on these items? We are officially in a recession and not sure where all of these projects fit in. All in all... most (not all) is pork.