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Category Archives: Uncategorized
Speed Improvements for Mapping Site
Here is just a quick update on my site that allows you to map multiple locations on Google Maps. If you use the site regularly, you may have noticed that it has been slow, and sometimes unresponsive, lately. (Also, you may have noticed some very wonky behavior today, but that was because I was tweaking [...]
Wedding photos are coming in!
This will be a very quick post, but the wedding photos are trickling in from everyone.
Be sure to browse and share!
Big Brother on the Orange Line
I got on the Orange Line (one of Boston's subway lines) yesterday, and noticed this little guy watching me. There was one watching the inside of each door, and one looking either direction down the car from the center (there are three doors on each side of the car, so 8 cameras total, per car). Not all cars have these cameras, so I imagine they are testing them in some cars, or slowly rolling them out. I noticed them in cars numbered 01214 and 01248.
I wonder what prompted this, or is it just part of the general trend to watch everyone, at all times? Does anyone watch this live? Is it even recorded? Is it just for Panopticon effect?
At a time when the MBTA is massively in debt, this kind of surveillance is not cheap, especially with 8 cameras per car. I don't see this helping catch fare evaders. Are violent crimes on the subway very common? I've never seen or heard of any (though I have certainly heard of shootings on the busses). I doubt the transit police would bother even reviewing the tapes (let alone, install the system) for non-violent crimes, like pick-pockets.
Is this meant to catch those people that molest women in crowded subways? How would the camera see what was happening if it was that crowded?
Or is this all just more money spent to give us the illusion of security and safety?
Module Test CGI script for Perl
It can sometimes be difficult to track down problems due to missing dependencies when deploying a CGI application to a shared host, especially when they don't give you shell access or let you view the web server error logs.
So, I wrote this small CGI script to check for dependencies and let you know when certain modules are not present or are out of date. I bundle this will all of my Perl CGI apps, so I can tell right away if something is missing. I will develop the application locally, of course, but I will check the output of this script whenever I deploy to a new environment, whether it is a test server or production.
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That Man Loves Freedom
That man loves freedom. Some friends and I have this meme, where when we see someone doing something awesome, we say, "That man (or woman) loves his freedom!" Clearly, this applies to guys with bad-ass mustaches, but also to basically anyone who goes against the grain.
When you see a guy in a beat-up pickup truck cut off a guy in a BMW, that guy loves his freedom. That's why freedom is this elusive thing.
Outlook trick for picking a conference room for a meeting
If you're like me, when creating a meeting, you hate trying to remember each conference room's name, selelcting it in Outlook, and then trying to figure out a time and room for the meeting. Most of the time, I'm sure I'm forgetting a room. Of course, if the names of the rooms all started the same (eg, Conference Room - Manhattan), it would be easier.
So, I created a distribution list for conference rooms in my local contacts list. Just click on New->Distribution list, and then add each conference room to the list. This will be the only time that you have to remember and find each conference room's name. From here on out, you can just use the list.
been busy…
I haven't had much time for my side projects lately, which means no blog entries. School has been very busy, but here's a preview of what's to come:
That's all for now, but check back soon!
-PK
- CPAN module to interface with the Lemur information retrieval system. One of my school projects involves writing a search engine using Lemur as a backend. So, I wrote a Perl module to parse the results. After the project is handed in, I will submit it to CPAN.
- Update to my utility for plotting multiple points on Google Maps. The Google Maps API has just been updated, including geocoding support. Hopefully this will make the geocoding much faster.
- Revamped Frisbee site. The new site is going to be written in Ruby on Rails, with a real database in the back end. It will feature RSS feeds, and I'd like to incorporate some AJAX functionality.
That's all for now, but check back soon!
-PK
So, this is my new blog
So, this is my new blog. More will come soon, when I finish finals, and have more time. Or, maybe I will decide to take a break from studying for a little bit to clear my mind. In any case, check back soon.
-PK
Experimenting with Panoramic Photography