Posted on 04-16-2008 under
web crawlingThis book logging idea has caught on good. I wrote about this earlier in my post on Goodreads. Recently I found out about Librarything, which pulls information on titles from 60+ online resoures.
A couple of days ago, I received an email to join this new site Shelfari. At first I ignored it, but I got a repeat email today. (Later I find out this was part of the evil mess.) So I registered.
According to Thingology (Library Thing’s blog), Shelfari has been accused of spamming its users’ contacts. It gets the contact list from your email account during registration and then (horrors!!) stores it, using it later to spam your entire contact list. Everyone. Including mailing lists.
Thank God I didn’t give those people my email password. And thank God, I thought of doing a search on the site’s validity.
/me shudders
So guys. If you’ve been invited to join Shelfari, DONT! Join Librarything, or Goodreads, or some of the other fine book logging sites out there. You have been warned!
Posted on 04-11-2008 under
web crawlingGo here first
Something’s Fishy
Heck yes it does!
Now go here
Got the idea yet?
Here’s a little helper. Go to Yubnub, and enter
20g10 my text
(Does not work with special characters though. Only alphanumerics please. )
Enjoy
Posted on 03-26-2008 under
web crawling… without having to be reminded of it.
Here’s a website that lets you record what shows you’ve watched, want to watch, and need to get. Its pretty cool in the way that it takes off a (not-so-huge) load of organizing what you watch. Just what we needed, eh? More organization. So now, in addition to the time I spend watching TV shows, I can spend yet more time logging it too :)
Seriously though, this is a very nice idea. And it really does save some time tracking down all those episodes you haven’t seen. Web design is smooth and sleek, not like most bloatware sites, that just assume you have a sewage pipe sized internet connection. It loads fast, and has a sufficiently easy interface. And almost everything links to a summary on tvrage.com, which is also fast to load (unlike tv.com).
The feature I like the most though, is the “Time I’ve Wasted” page. Blooming brilliant. According to the site, I’ve wasted 1 months, 1 days, 14 hours of my life watching TV. Of course, thats just the stuff I’ve logged. Who know how many hours I’ve wasted on shows that I haven’t logged.
Kudos to the creators and hope it keeps running.
Posted on 03-11-2008 under
web crawlingI was browsing apache.org, trying to download the docs. The server presented to me was LUMS! How very interesting. Download speed is not so hot though. :-S
This will increase my respect for LUMS a little bit.
Posted on 03-11-2008 under
electronics,
karachi,
web crawlingSolar power is seeing increasing amounts of development these days. According to EETimes, the solar industry has seen revenues rise from $10 billion in 2006 to $13 billion in 2007. Cell efficiencies for the experimental varieties are getting to the point that they may be able to compete with fossil fuel generation. It may not be far off in the future when we are free of fossil fuel producers and their control over the international market.
The current market leaders in solar cell production are Japan and Germany. But China is rapidly increasing its output capacity, and it will very quickly overtake Japan, the current lead.
Increasingly, semi-conductor manufacturers are spending R&D budgets on this new, rapidly expanding market. According to John Boyd at EETimes:
We can be sure that almost every large semiconductor manufacturer has a PV program of some sort and is assessing strategies to leverage its manufacturing experience and depreciating assets.
While this is very good news for the environment, it is also good news for power generation. Sufficiently mass-produced and well-researched, this option may be cheap enough for low-income economies like our own.
So what does the future of solar power hold for Pakistan, with our gift of eternal sun. Recently some encouraging actions have been taken by our government.
According to the Business Recorder dated 10th February, 2008:
The government has decided to use solar energy-based lights on all important buildings … “With appropriate energy conservation policy, a minimum saving up to 25 percent in various segments of the energy sector can bring saving of $2 billion per annum.”
And on uniquepakistan.com, dated 24th February, 2008:
City District Government Karachi has decided to use solar energy system as alternate source for electricity at public places in Karach … City Government has invited Expression of Interest (EOI) from Foreign/Local Firms … for providing solar energy system for parks, street lights, on bridges, lamp poles, spotlights, wall mounted lights, landscape lights etc. in Karachi.
In light of the current power situation in Pakistan, and especially Karachi, this is welcome news. It remains to be seen how this plan is actually carried out, since the change in government might just put this on the backburner. I do believe however, that Pakistan is very ripe for solar power, perhaps even to a surplus production capacity. Lets all wait and see.
