welcome to my site, the junction point for my online activities. You will find links to papers and code that I've written, projects that I develop and communities that I participate in. I also post things I find interesting in the links section and in my del.icio.us account. You will also notice that I publish commentary on various subjects in my blog on free-chrome.net (rss feed below). enjoy

Iran and the U.S. == Democracy –

As I'm sure most out there have, I've been reading a lot in the news about Iran's disputed elections and the protests and it got me wondering just how different their election process is from my countries.

Government sponsered TED Talks

This is too interesting not to mention. The State Department under Secretary of State Clinton is hosting the first government sponsored TED Talks (Read some details on the White House Blog). Along with fora.tv TED Talks is one of my favorite outlets on the net. It is an annual conference that aims that offers some [...]

pandora music

I was reading skudd's blog today and he mentioned a music service called pandora. It uses a "The Music Genome Project" to classify music mathematically based on over 400 attributes. It is very interesting and I've never heard of it before skudds post. Now it has become my primary means of listening to good music. I just type in a few artists that I enjoy and the company creates a line up of music that is similar.

Misplaced Values

I was reading the news today and ran across the headline, 'Idol' Upset: Kris Allen Beats Adam Lambert. Now I understand that this is a prime-time talent show but when did this start to become real news? This story actually beat out anything on the the new credit card law or even bombings in pakistan. It is a talent show and just entertainment. Entertainment, as we all know, goes toward the back just before the classifieds, opinion articles and comics. How did this entertainment piece get to the front page?

Worship toward the east?

That Christians used to pray toward the east? Here is an excerpt from Saint John Damascene's exposition of the Orthodox Faith which was written in maybe the eighth century or late seventh.

something i can’t eat and happy easter!

I have finally found something that i just can't stomach. For those that don't know I am not squeamish about eating exotic or weird foods. I've eaten everything from garlic sautéed frog legs to turtle fitada (sea turtle is a delicacy here) and I enjoy most. Well, i've finally found something that I just refuse to eat...Fruit bat.

conficker… overhyped?

There is a really great list of repair tools for the conficker worm here on the conficker working groups site and they have a pretty cool infection test. I personally think the conficker worm is overhyped. The two main methods of infection have both been patched. Those two methods being a buffer overflow in the services [...]

Where’s the bottom?

What is the US National dept again? Something like 1.3 Trillion. What happens when we hit the bottom? Where in fact is the bottom? Will the deficit stop us from making changes? Right now the deficit is right around 74.6% of the GDP. In 1980 it was only 33.3%. If you have short-term memory you [...]