dvrom.eu

I am all for onscreen reading, and consumption of content via electronic media.

However, in my case, when I need some quick content extraction, nothing works better than p & p media: pen & paper.

The pen part is quite easy to solve, but sometimes I struggle on transforming the electronic media to paper.

More specifically, sometimes I discover some great blog, with quite a big amount of posts, that doesn’t offer any easy printing solution.

The world of SEO remains a mystery to me, and I have never really given much thought on how an unmanaged and unoptimized blog should measure up on daily visits.

So, when browsing the daily visit statistics for this blog from time to time, I expect anything from 10 to 60.

However, a couple of days ago, I was quite surprised to see only 2 visits.

Surely enough, a quick visit to the homepage showed a blank page.

1. Download the complete wordpress directory
2. Export wordpress database
3. Place the directory in your htdocs folder
4. Import the exported database
5. Edit the ‘siteurl ‘ entry in the wordpress options database table and make sure it is correct i. e. http://localhost:8888/www/wp
6. Edit the ‘home’ entry in the wordpress options database table and make sure it is correct i. e. http://localhost:8888/www
7. If your local server does not support ssl, make sure ‘define(‘FORCE_SSL_ADMIN’, true);’ is not present in your wp-config.php file

…or how to reach a relatively far away wireless router from a workstation with no wireless capabilities.

In my case the goal is to connect to a wireless network from a workstation that only has a PCIe NIC.

The simplest solution is probably to use a USB wifi dongle on the workstation, but it can be quite complicated to find working wireless network drivers for linux systems such as ubuntu 64 bits, which I currently use.

In my case, after having no luck on linux drivers for the Belkin Play Wireless N+N300 Dual Band USB Adapter, I remembered I still had an old Conceptronic C54APM Access Point lying around somewhere in the closet.

In the past, I used it to offer a wireless network from a non-wireless cable modem router and, fortunately enough, after some googling on the possible operation modes, it seems it offered what I needed:

My use of the “AP Bridge – WDS” mode goes something like this:

Tools, Specialists and Faith

Quote from Michael Nygard – The Future of Software Development”:

"Speaking of languages, many of the problems we face today cannot be solved inside a single language or application.
The behavior of a web site today cannot be adequately explained or reasoned about just by examining the application
code. Instead, a site picks up attributes of behavior from a multitude of sources: application code, web server configuration,
 edge caching servers, data grid servers, offline or asynchronous processing, machine learning elements, active network
devices (such as application firewalls), and data stores. "Programming" as we would describe it today--coding application
behavior in a request handler--defines a diminishing portion of the behavior. We lack tools or languages to express and
reason about these distributed, extended, fragmented systems. Consequently, it is difficult to predict the functionality,
performance, capacity, scalability, and availability of these systems."

I couldn’t agree more with this…

So, just when exactly are the T-800s and the WALL-Es going to be running around ?

(hopefully for us, the T-800s no time soon)

I remember taking a robotics course back during my studies in the early 2000′s, and the autonomous specific-purpose line-following 4-wheeled Number 5 ancestor that resulted from putting together a PCB, a servo, some amateur welding, some sloppy microprogramming and a lot of enthusiasm, was quite far away from David.

Nevertheless, the strong willed sheldons of the world continue to close the gap between science fiction and reality, and every once in a while, some results popup which certainly raise my eyebrows.

I recently stumbled upon the “Space & Robots” lecture given at the singularity university by NASA astronaut Dan Barry.

The entire presentation does a great job on briefly discussing adaptiveness, robotics and A.I., but what caught my eye were the various examples of current-day efforts in robotics, and specially these two:

Somehow, I am not very good at pretending I don’t know anything about computers, and I recently ended up building a essentially-simple but constraint-complex portfolio site.

Hoping that it could be useful for anybody else that frequently finds themselves in a “friend / relative / XXX” who is a “computer guy / gal “ kind of role, and who is expected to easily and quickly solve any computer related task, here goes one possible quick and simple solution for building the aforementioned portfolio site.

Building a portfolio website is certainly not the most complex of I.T. tasks nowadays, however, the constraints surrounding my business case did make it quite challenging:

• My knowledge on Web Design and Website construction has not advanced since the early 00′s (CSS effects, Flash and HTML5 remain quite a mystery to me)
• The total cost of construction / hosting….and anything else, must be 0
• No ugly side effects of free hosting (such as popups) are allowed
• The portfolio must allow easy album management: uploading, coding and any other technical aspects are to remain transparent for the end user

Although it offers much more than GPS data logging, the eTrex Venture HC is a good choice for GPS data logging needs.

Although cheaper and more limited (functionality wise) models can be found, the eTrex Venture HC is great value for money.

The 10.000 point logging capacity, excellent reception and 14 hour battery life, and the Garmin Mac-friendly software utilities, were enough to convince me.

With Road Trip for example, it is possible to export recorded data in GPX format.

GPX is a standard XML format used for describing GPS data.

One possible source for such information is, for example, a GPS data logger.

The path from GPX to Google Maps can be completed in 3 simple steps: