This morning, I searched for an obscure song on Google. "song name - artist name". It was the first hit, and it had a little play button next to it. I played the song, and then was given the option to buy the song for $0.89.
This is insanely awesome.
I spent the last several days wrestling with exim4 on debian. I know
nothing about SMTP servers, so I'm slowly and painfully learning how
to configure them. I have a custom SMTP server I'm actively
developing, and I need a workflow that allows me to develop on a stage
server and then eventually push those changes to a live, production
server. However, I only have one linode host to work with, and one IP
address. So I chose to have my custom server running on
stage.example.com:2501 and the production server example.com:2500.
Then I had exim4 relay to the appropriate server based on the
recipient domain.
In /etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf file, make sure the following lines exist:
dc_local_domains='example.com'
dc_relay_domains='*.example.com;example.com'
Additionally, I needed to modify the remote_smtp transport
(/etc/exim4/conf.d/transport/30_exim4-config_remote_smtp). In the
"remote_smtp" section, immediately following "drive = smtp":
port = ${lookup{$domain}lsearch{/etc/exim4/domain_port_mapping}{$value}{25}}
Make sure you have the following in /etc/exim4/domain_port_mapping:
stage.example.com 2501
example.com 2500
One last addition is needed to make this work. We need to add a line
to the router that lets us know that it's okay to relay mail to
localhost. So, in /etc/exim4/conf.d/router/200_exim4-config_primary,
in the "dnslookup_relay_to_domains:" section, put this:
self = send
And that's it. As long as the servers are running on ports 2500 and
2501, this exim4 configuration will do what's necessary. Hooray for 5
days of pain!
I recently read the book "Blink" by Malcom Gladwell. I highly recommend this book to everyone. It talks mainly about how our minds analyze situations quickly and how some of the conclusions we draw are highly accurate and some are horribly off the mark.
One such term he uses is "thin-slicing". This is understood to mean taking a tiny slice of an experience, sight, sound, or whatever and extracting a great deal if information out of that situation. An example is given about a statue purchased by some museum that was subsequently examined by a great deal of people and thought to be legitimate. Tons of analysis and scientific study was done and concluded the statue was exactly what was claimed. Then, the top expert in this field was brought in, and within 3 seconds of seeing the statue, he knew it was fake. He felt this. After more analysis, his intuition turned out to be true. People have these experiences daily, where they know something is true but can't explain why. This is what "Blink" is all about. The tagline is "The power of thinking without thinking". At one point, Gladwell mentions that our thin-slicing ability is directly correlated to our experiences. Thus, our intuition is informed by our prior experiences within a certain area. This is the reason the expert was able to instantly realize the statue was a fake. What this means is that experiences train our intuition. I should mention that this is science. This is not an attempt to justify people "feeling" that something is true (take, for example, the belief in God). What we're talking about are situations that can be repeatedly tested and experimented with such that truth is knowable. Science has shown us that our intuition is a biological mechanism (although not yet fully understood). So, if our intuition can be trained, my thoughts drifted to artificial intelligence. I've been reading recently about artificial neural networks, which are basically nodes in a graph with different weights on each edge, all thrown together. They're used in very specific situations and can be very, very good at coming up with answers to difficult questions. However, they must be trained. The similarity here is striking. If we can train these neural networks, have we come up with an explanation of how a huge portion of our brains work? Figuring out why an artificual neural network arrived at an answer is notoriously difficult to do. Is this the reason we cannot figure out how the human brain works (yet)? Anyway, there's no point to this blog post. I just found the connection fascinating, the link between how our intuition appears to operate and how we can accurately train neural networks to answer very specific questions. Neural networks = homegrown intuition-boxes. Weird! Isn't science cool?
I'm selling my Lenovo Thinkpad T61. Specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.50 GHz T9300When I lived in PAR (a dorm on the southernmost part of campus), anytime I wanted food, I had to time my travels such that I waited for a bus, took a half hour trip around Chambana, and eventually got to the store. I then had to time my shoppiing such that I could get back to the bus without waiting an additional half hour.
What if I could've paid, say, 15-20 dollars for a stretch limo to pick me up, take me to the store in style and luxury, wait outside while I shop, and then return me to my dorm? I would not have hesitated. I know this is tough for some folks, but for a second, disregard whether or not you think this is possible. Don't worry about whether or not you think it's cost-effective to run or the logistics behind it. I want to know one thing: how much would you pay? Some folks pay hourly for zip cars and others wouldn't pay $5 for a bike (let alone ride all the way there). Some people will pay hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars for a bike and then ride there. Would you pay $30? $15? Would you pay anything?I'm a pretty analytical person. I analyze the things around me and I analyze myself. Mostly it's just to try to figure things out, without a real purpose or goal in mind. It's been interesting to discover (sometimes by myself, sometimes with other people) how this quirk is changing or affecting me. It's well-known in meditation circles that the act of observing thy self, changes thy self. (This is getting too meta!)
If something tiny and inconsequential happens in any daily situation, I tend to notice it. If I'm alone, I just sort of notice it and then carry on whatever I was doing before. If I'm around someone else and I'm looking for a way to engage in some kind of conversation, any tiny thing that happens tends to be good for that sort of thing. So I'll react to a phone vibrating, or somebody laughing in another room, or a door slamming, or whatever. My instincts on these matters are usually pretty good; a conversation will usually result. But if the situation is awkward in any way, or something that I want to alleviate, disregard, and otherwise send away, I will not react. If you play poker, this is a classic tell. When someone has a really good hand, they want to discourage people from folding, so they'll withdraw, act very quiet, and otherwise not try to rock the boat in the hopes that the situation will progress in their favor. They want others to think everything is well. Yet, it's sometimes tangential to this. I usually act very quietly to not rock the boat, but only in an attempt to discourage the awkward situation from continuing. My default instinct is that any change will keep this unwanted scenario, not rid me of it. This is usually correct (I think). I don't really see either of these traits as bad things, other than the possible application it may have to my poker game. (That will eternally need forward progress.) I've recently turned my attention from trying to figure out machines and concepts to figuring out people. And boy, is it interesting.I've come to the conclusion that I do not want to be a person who, at all times, has a huge collection of material possessions that must be taken care of anytime I want to do something agile in my life (quickly moving, travelling, etc.). To that end, I am going to begin (soon) a somewhat-radical experiment: living out of a backpack (or something similary small).
Obviously I will be keeping items that ensure my safety and health, like medicine, food, and hygiene related stuff. I have no idea how long this experiment will last, but I want to simplify my life. Having a lot of stuff is not necessarily a problem, but it means that things easily get messy and time-consuming to clean and tidy up (and keep organized). Having lots of "stuff" means distractions, too. I recently got rid of my TV and it was a great thing to do. I don't miss it. I still have the distraction cloud of the internet, but that seems to be a much harder problem to solve. The things I will definitely be keeping (outside of the backpack) are basically clothing, medicine, food, and my guitar. I have stuff that I haven't touched in months (in some cases, even years) that I seem to just lug around from place to place but still keep out of the rationale of "I might need this someday". No more. I've talked to a few folks who are going to participate as well, and I welcome anyone who'd like to join me in this expedition. Good luck.I've discovered that I enjoy working and/or wasting time at a local coffee place, Espresso Royale. It's nothing like my original view of coffee shops (namely, starbucks). Espresso occasionally has unique bands play and mostly plays local and/or unknown alternative music when there isn't live stuff. The atmosphere is great, and the people are extremely friendly. I need to get south of green street more often.
In other news, conference is a week away, w00t!I had an interesting experience yesterday that I wanted to share and analyze, because I'm not exactly sure what happened.
Each year, a student group puts on a conference. The topic of the conference is not relevant, what's relevant are the logistics. The conference is free, but attendees are encouraged to register to receive a free tshirt and pay a fee if they'd like food throughout the weekend. Every year, most of the attendees register. However, there is always a number of folks (local students who see advertisements on the bus or quad, for example) who show up without registering and happily receive a free tshirt. Of course I have no problem with these logistics. I'm not criticizing the way anything is run; each year the conference is a wild success. However, as a capitalist, I am trying to see a way to make (even just a little) more money from something like this, without sacrificing the quality of the conference or anybody's experience. Everyone loves free stuff, but I hypothesize that NOT giving away free tshirts to UNREGISTERED attendees will not affect the overall quality of the conference experience for the participants. I suggested selling each spare tshirt to anyone who wants one at the conference for something like $10. Due to some existing funding situations, it costs close to $2 to print each tshirt. If we have 100 spare shirts, and we sell them at $10 a piece, that's 800 dollars without really sacrificing anything. Sure, it isn't enough to hire a speaker or pay for anything really enormous, but it's completely effortless. And what's the downside? We don't sell them all? We have boxes of conference tshirts from years past, so that argument doesn't make sense. The reactions I got were mixed, but I can't remember a single one who thought it was a good idea. I'm not upset, I'm just surprised. It could be that most people don't think the same way I do. Perhaps I came across as a cutthroat capitalist who wants to make money at the expense of anything else (this is ridiculous, I think). Either way, I'm still at a loss to explain why this idea was shot down. After this debate, a friend (who had been eating a fortune cookie) walked up and handed me the fortune. It said "You will do well in expanding your business." I now keep this in my wallet :-)
Rands (www.randsinrepose.com) spoke at ACM Reflections|Projections last year, and it was a fantastic talk. He's a project manager at a rather large, well-known software company. His most recent blog post is entitled "Hurry", and deals with ideas and success. Read it here (it's short): http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2009/10/02/hurry.html
It reminded me of one of the most motivational ideas that ever hit me: the idea that successful people are no different than everyone else. The ongoing impression is that these people are smarter or have some sort of innate "killer instinct". I don't think this is true. Since I've been in school, I've met several people who have been either mildly or wildly successful. Each time this happened, they were utterly normal. There were a few differences that I noticed, but these were differences not in talent or intelligence, but in attitude. These were people who talked about ideas, not about stuff or other people (unless they related to ideas). It's a well-uttered fact that success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration, but it's hard to internalize this and believe it. It's true though, I think. Unfortunately, I have yet to experience wild success in this capacity, but seed funding groups like YCombinator routinely find lots of success by choosing who to invest in based upon that PERSON, sometimes more so than the actual IDEA. They judge these things based upon how passionate the applicant is and their attitudes. They've discovered (so far) that this is the best way to successful investment. The money doesn't lie. Once you discover that successful people mostly don't have any intellectual or innate edge over you, there are no longer any excuses to not follow your dream. It's sometimes easier to ask forgiveness than permission, so go for it. Deal with things as they come instead of trying to plan everything. It's the journey that matters, not the destination. But every once in awhile, the destination will be simply fantastic.
I'm 23. I write software, play poker, jam on my guitar, and try to meet new people every day.
"Keep away from those who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you believe that you too can become great." - Mark Twain
"Imagination is a poor substitute for experience."
"One small step up the mountain often widens your horizon in all directions."
"If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."
