one relating to, belonging to, or resembling lunatech

  • September, 2012
  • Some quotes from Abraham Lincoln's Lyceum address

    I was lucky to come across Abraham Lincoln's Lyceum address. The speech has some interesting parts

    When I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws, let me not be understood as saying there are no bad laws, or that grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed. So also in unprovided cases. If such arise, let proper legal provisions be made for them with the least possible delay, but till then let them, if not too intolerable, be borne with.

    About the founding fathers of America

    Their ambition aspired to display before an admiring world a practical demonstration of the truth of a proposition which had hitherto been considered at best no better than problematical-namely, the capability of a people to govern themselves. If they succeeded they were to be immortalized; their names were to be transferred to counties, and cities, and rivers, and mountains; and to be revered and sung, toasted through all time. If they failed, they were to be called knaves, and fools, and fanatics for a fleeting hour; then to sink and be forgotten.

    About ambitious people

    But the game is caught; and I believe it is true that with the catching end the pleasures of the chase. This field of glory is harvested, and the crop is already appropriated. But new reapers will arise, and they too will seek a field.

    It is to deny what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion as others have done before them.

    Many great and good men, sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found whose ambition would aspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion or the tribe of the eagle. What! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon? Never!

  • creating org-mode TODOs from wanderlust emails

    If you are one of those five people in the world who use Emacs' wanderlust for email and org-mode, then you might find this tip useful. To create TODO items from emails, use the org-capture template. Below is the template that I use

    (setq org-capture-templates '(("t" "Todo" entry
                                  (file+headline "~/org/mygtd.org" "Tasks")
      " TODO %^{Brief Description} %^g\n%?\nAdded: %U" :prepend t)
                                 ("j" "Journal" entry
      (file+headline "~/dump/journal.org" "")
      "\n %^{topic} %T \n%i%?\n" :prepend t)
                                 ("e" "Email Todo" entry
                                  (file+headline "~/org/mygtd.org" "Tasks")
                                  "* TODO %^{Brief Description}\n%a\n%?Added: %U\n" :prepend t)
          ))
    
    

    When you are reading an email and you want to create a TODO item from it, just do M-x org-capture and select the Email Todo (e).

  • August, 2012
  • Some interesting thoughts from this blog post about women in technology

    Most female researchers turn out to be working on User Experience or Human-Computer Interaction. Fields which I find rather woolly. I find the sort of projects they take up very fascinating, and they have a real impact on the world, but the ratio of actual output/impact to time spent by each researcher is rather low, in my opinion.
  • July, 2012
  • Eric Cartman's musical in Butterballs

    I had a chance to see the South Park's 'Butterballs' episode on the southpark website. The most enjoyable part of the episode, for me, was Eric Cartman singing about his vajayjay in the musical. Below are Eric's words -

    Used to be chicks sang about their relaionships; now it's all "my vajayjay this, my vajayjay that." But clearly that's what sells. When was the last time you turned on a music video and didn't see some chick strumming a guitar singing about her vajayjay?

    Oh you like my body
    Yeah c'mon let's play
    You can touch me anywhere
    Except on my vajayjay
    My heart says yes
    But my vajayjay says no
    

  • March, 2012
  • seven years at Yahoo!

    Today completes my seven years at Yahoo! These seven years have given me an opportunity to work with some great people, given me a chance to clean up mess at a huge scale and taught me new almost every day. Thanks Filo & Jerry for creating this place.

  • February, 2012
  • 2012-02-28 - thoughtstream

    Here is a quote (slightly paraphrased) that I have seen people throw around a bit

    Let us be like Apple and make our app simple. We will not allow users to change this and this, and obviously, we have no need to expose this setting to them in any way.
    As someone who has used Apple products for some time now, I have never found Apple devices to restrict what users could configure or change. Almost every Apple device has a "System Preferance" and you can tweak a lot of settings from there. Of course, most of Apple devices are pretty usable out of the box. I have not used an iPhone for a long time, but my experience with Macbook is that it is extremely customizable. I can say the same about the Apple TV.


    I think if an artifact meets either of the following criteria, it can be called art

    • Something that shakes me out of a rut and see something ordinary with a new perspective
    • something that can bring joy
    • something that can inspire


  • gitosis hint: does not appear to be a git repository

    You have successfully installed gitosis, and you have been able to add users into gitosis. Now, on a remote computer, you try to checkout.

    tearlayneed-lm:tmp rshekhar$ git clone ssh://stormcrow@home:221/gitosis-admin
    Cloning into gitosis-admin...
    fatal: '/gitosis-admin' does not appear to be a git repository
    fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly
    
    I am running the ssh server on port 221 and my username is stormcrow. If your reaction is WTF!, then I can sympathise with you. The correct clone command is
    git clone ssh://stormcrow@home:221/~/gitosis-admin
    Cloning into gitosis-admin...
    remote: Counting objects: 24, done.
    
    If you failed to notice, there is a ~ required.

Page 6 of 60, totaling 418 entries