April 2007

Ivory sculptures at the Guangzhou Chen Family Temple. The first two, especially, have spheres within spheres within spheres… which looks impossible to carve.

I often need to extract words out of sentences. It’s one of the things I used to build the Statistically Improbable Phrases for Calvin and Hobbes. But splitting a sentence into words isn’t as easy as you think. Think about it. What is a word? Something that has spaces around it? OK, let’s start with the simplest way to get words: split by spaces. Consider this piece: "I'd look at McDonald's," he said. "They sell over 3,000,000 burgers a day -- at $1.50 each." High-fat foods were the rage. For e.g., margins in fries were over 50%... and (except for R&M & Dyana [sic]) everyone was at ~30% net margin; growing at 25% too! Splitting this by spaces (consider new lines, tabs, etc as spaces too.), we get the following: ...

John Resig has written a Sparklines library. Here’s an example. I wrote that HTTP download speeds not linear 182,315,313,319,314,459,441,445,453,525,567,552,577,587,580,581,590,663,639,658,616,705,720,695,739,750,720,741,803,800,800,818,800,856,796,816,866,841,836,828,861,893,859,905,881,885,946,944,943,984,1003,1012,994,979,977,986,1010,1017,1027,1000,1035,986,1006,1006,996,1022,1003,1053,1046,1061,1002,1064,1014,1039,1061,1023,1076,1081,1019,1064,1072,1089,1101,1069,1128,1125,1092,1155,1170,1067,1094,1082,1178,1211,1154,1169,1133,1161,1193,1167 and that they flatten out over time. A linear line would look like this: 180,190,201,211,221,232,242,252,262,273,283,293,304,314,324,335,345,355,365,376,386,396,407,417,427,438,448,458,468,479,489,499,510,520,530,541,551,561,572,582,592,602,613,623,633,644,654,664,675,685,695,705,716,726,736,747,757,767,778,788,798,808,819,829,839,850,860,870,881,891,901,912,922,932,942,953,963,973,984,994,1004,1015,1025,1035,1045,1056,1066,1076,1087,1097,1107,1118,1128,1138,1148,1159,1169,1179,1190,1200 The little red line here is a sparkline that’s based on real data. John’s javascript converts the data into a graph. Sparklines were introduced by Edward Tufte.

In some of the Web projects I'm working on, I have a choice of many small files vs few big files to download. There are conflicting arguments. I've read that many small files are better, because you can choose to use only the required files, and they'll be cached across the site. (These are typically CSS or Javascript files.) On the other hand, a single large file takes less time to download than the sum on many small files, because there's less latency. (Latency is more important than bandwidth these days.) ...

(If you don’t get it, see what All your base are belong to us means) via This is my pizza. Comments Grant Carpenterk 17 Apr 2007 12:00 pm: LOL, that comic was made of pure awesome! Well done on your adaptation! Grand Carp 1 Oct 2008 12:24 pm: Awesome (no I’m not Grant Capenterk, I’m making fun of his name) Carpe Grand 1 Oct 2008 5:31 pm: May I join in the fun? S Anand 1 Oct 2008 5:32 pm: Hmm… comments are going a bit off-topic here…

7 little known ways to improve learning. Comments Rishi 17 Apr 2007 12:00 pm: how can i read them?

MessenPass recovers passwords for instant messengers – GTalk, Yahoo Messenger and Windows Messenger included. These passwords are the same as their corresponding e-mails (GMail and Yahoo Mail at least). via Amit. Comments Sumit Dhar 11 Apr 2007 4:36 am: While on the topic of Passwords, search for Elcomsoft Password Recovery software on any Torrent site. Awesome set of applications that crack Office, PDF and many other password protection schemes.

Here are words from the middle of 15 old songs (before 1970). Can you guess which movie they are from? Don't worry about the spelling. Just spell it like it sounds, and the box will turn green. Comments Meera 14 Mar 2009 1:28 am: Its just recollection… but with joy Venkatramanan 6 Apr 2007 11:54 am: Nice! Enjoyed it banu 9 Apr 2007 12:24 pm: this is good Viju 10 Apr 2007 12:50 pm: your choice of songs is awesome Anil mattoo 11 Apr 2007 9:04 am: Great! ramesh lee 14 May 2007 3:30 am: Songs-Kannamma Kannamma brinda r 14 May 2007 6:11 am: interesting hameed 6 Apr 2007 12:00 pm: Could you please tell me who sang the song and in what movie- ‘‘muttu pole manjal kottu pole- mulu nilavei nee piranthaai engal veetilei’’. Thank you. sambasivam 6 Apr 2007 12:00 pm: enjoyable. vist look forward to more such quizes Neelaram 6 Apr 2007 12:00 pm: Nice jana 6 Apr 2007 12:00 pm: its a nice one. p.lakshmi 6 Apr 2007 12:00 pm: very nice floranz 6 Apr 2007 12:00 pm: golden old songs araNmaNai aRivaan ariyaNai aRivaan 6 Apr 2007 12:00 pm: golden old songs T.selvarajah 6 Apr 2007 12:00 pm: I dunno exately all songs are right?? thanks badhu 6 Apr 2007 12:00 pm: what about the answers? Vetty 6 Apr 2007 12:00 pm: It is so fantastic that people of all ages could enjoy listening to their favourite songs. So great is your service. You should continue like the service of the Sun TV for the Asatha Povathu Yaru. Hats off! INDIAN 6 Apr 2007 12:00 pm: ibotu arijavan kedubokirarkal ulaha film kalai patu atai atinsum arijamalum kedukitarkal itai mata manita jatijal mudijatu orvani tavara avantan j-aj ibadigu nalam ungal j ey indian krish 6 Apr 2007 12:00 pm: can be much better than the before.dont mistake. geetha 6 Apr 2007 12:00 pm: i have sent my asnwers priya 6 Apr 2007 12:00 pm: very nice P.Asha 6 Apr 2007 12:00 pm: This is nice santha k. nayar 6 Apr 2007 12:00 pm: iT IS VERY VERY GOOD. gOD BLESS YOU. MUNIPRAPAKAR 6 Apr 2007 12:00 pm: IT IS VERY NICE SONG IT TOUCH MY HEART HAVE TO LISTEN AT NIGHT TIME OR AT THE BEACH SIDE WITH FRESH AIR AND WAVE !!!!!! subbu CBE 6 Apr 2007 12:00 pm: its very nice and time passing.though i know 90%of songs but not able to find name of movie. you should provide ans also Jagan 30 Oct 2008 11:04 pm: Nice one.. I hum these song’s but i dont know the name of Movies. Keep it up.. dilan 10 Dec 2008 1:08 am: Its coooooooooooooooooooool.Interesting. MUNIPRAPAKAR 11 Dec 2008 2:46 am: Not Bad keep it up is very Intersting and nice too YOU CAN BE ALL BY YOURSELF……..UNGGAL NANBAN DHARMAPURI RAMIYAMPATTI S.NAVEEN 14 Dec 2008 11:03 pm: this is very useful for me. keerthivasan 19 Dec 2008 4:55 am: very Interesting kalai 25 Dec 2008 2:56 am: hi thulsi raman 29 Jan 2009 8:23 am: excellent! keep it up| sambasivam 15 Mar 2009 6:54 am: good show. keep it up. made 12/15 Jaya 22 Aug 2010 11:05 am: coolllll…………… Arun 2 Nov 2010 3:06 am: Dooes anyone know the song “aadutha vettu sottha amukka nenachavan….” (Sung by Janakaraj in a movie in jail balaji 25 Nov 2010 12:10 pm: i’ve listioned all the songs but, i cant remember the name.. it’s cool.. Shobhana 17 Oct 2011 12:32 pm: Got 15/15!!!! Sarora 30 Mar 2011 10:02 pm: ya a very nice experience………..

If you just want to check if you have new mail on Gmail, use Google’s personalised home page and add Gmail to the homepage. This shows new mail and a few words as a snippet. If you want to read your mail, and don’t want to forward it to another account, use Google Groups as a backup to Gmail. Create a private Google Group and forward mails from Gmail to it. Google Groups often is not blocked, even if Gmail is. ...