Life 2.0

It's been a while since I posted on this blog. I just updated the design using the new "Template Designer" on Blogger to keep up with Web 2.0. But since my last post I created a new blog hosted on my laptop, had the laptop crash, and now another one on Posterous. I graduated May 2010 and I'm off to different things. Follow my new blog at take3.

I plan on updating take3 with similar things like technologies I find interesting and hopefully more fitness articles. Hope to see you there!

5 Tips To Keep Clutter-Free

Very often when I’m working, I find my workspace very messy and cluttered. It starts off with one empty water bottle. Then maybe a couple stray papers come join the small gathering. Before I know it, I’m looking at a small country of clutter. However, there a couple small things you can do to prevent this from happening.

Why is a messy workspace so bad? You might think that it really doesn’t pose a problem. Most geniuses tend to be messy pigs right? Well, whether you’re that genius or not, messy workspaces slow you down both physically and mentally. You become less productive and sometimes less energetic.

There are some small things you can do to prevent clutter from accumulating.

1. Clean in bits – Don’t let trash have a chance to grow bigger. Mess begets more mess. Whenever you take something out, make sure put it away! Whenever ever there’s a single piece of trash on your desk, throw it away immediately. It is much more manageable to clean up small things. By handling clutter when it’s small, you never need to worry about big messes and your desk always stays clean.


2. Keep only what you need – Your things on your desk should be things that are in your immediate use. This has to do with cleaning in bits but whenever you finish a task, “archive” it. What does “archiving” mean? It means to store documents, projects, or anything in general for easy reference in the future. When you archive something, you know you won’t be using it for a while so you put it away (preferably in an organized fashion). For example, I like to keep one folder for things I’m working on during the current week. Whenever I’m done with a week, I archive those assignments put them in binders I leave in my room. Anything older than a week on your desk should probably be put away.


3. Dust your desk – Wipe your desk with a moist cloth/paper towel every 3-4 days to keep dust away. Whenever there are food particles, dust, or small bits of any crap, you’ll start to mentally believe that it’s okay to have a bit of clutter on top. Actually dusting your desk forms a sense of cleanliness and a reason to keep it clean like “I just cleaned this desk…I should probably try to keep it clean.” Another reason that dusting keeps your clutter-free is that in order to really wipe your desk, you can’t have anything on top (that means clean that clutter on top before you wipe).


4. Create a organizational system – I’m not talking about your files and documents. I’m actually talking about the top of your desk. Have a cup or something to hold your pencils and pens. Maybe have a special area or even a tray to hold papers, and if needed, another spot for your computer/laptop. Allot a certain area for staplers, tape, etc. Having some sort of system for everything on your desk lets you know what’s out of place and helps you fix it. You’ll easily be able to tell when clutter is forming. Not only this, but you’ll be able to find things quicker and hence be more productive.


5. Make it “look” clean – Worst comes to worst, at least make your desk “look” like it’s clean. The eye works wonders on your brain. Just making something appear clean almost has the same effect on your productivity as if it really were clean. Don’t rely on this or substitute this for the real thing. What do I mean by this? If there’s a bunch of papers lying around, make them into a stack and place it in some corner. If you have knocked over soda cans, bottles, or bags lying around, make it at least look neater by putting the cans and bottles upright and together in some other corner. Put all those “miscellaneous” items together in some organized way. Essentially, what you are doing is setting up so that you can really clean this stuff up later. This is why this can’t substitute for real cleaning.

Every time you leave your desk, quickly go through these tips and you’ll be well on your way to staying clutter-free.

Is Your Buttermilk Bad?

Ever since I've been living on my own, there's a lot of questions that come up that I've never had to worry about. This especially includes food going bad. Recently, I had orange specks (dots) in my buttermilk. Did my buttermilk go bad and what is this?

When I found I had bright orange specks in my buttermilk, I really thought it had gone bad. And me, being a maniac on not wasting stuff, starting thinking about all the ways I could use up everything before it goes "completely bad".

With some research, I found out that these specks are actually not bad... in fact, it's what's used to make buttermilk. They are actually supposed to be there!

Bacteria: The Good Kind
The orange dots are a strain of lactic acid bacteria that are used in the fermentation process in making buttermilk. Most buttermilk you buy in stores is inoculated with this bacteria to promote the growth of bacteria found in traditionally-made buttermilk (you know, with the churning and stuff). They usually disappear after a while in room temperature but it doesn't matter if it does not go away. It is a natural part of making buttermilk.

Mystery of the Orange Specks: Case Solved!
So next time you find orange specks in your buttermilk, be thankful they're there. They are actually used to make buttermilk and you might not have buttermilk otherwise!

Note: So when is your buttermilk really bad? You'll know. You think when I say this, you won't. But you'll really know. Usually buttermilk smells sweet/sour. When it's gone bad, there's either something else growing in it (not orange) and it'll start to smell reeaally bad (kind of like when milk goes bad).

Dead Space: Will Scare Horror-Addicts

I'm not even the horror-loving type but this game has a certain appeal that draws you toward it. Dead Space is the most brilliant and awesome-looking sci-fi horror game I have ever seen. The game combines various features of other hits in the genre to produce a nasty and thrilling mix.

Unfortunately, I don't have any 3rd-generation game consoles so even though I won't be able to play this game, I still feel like I have an attachment to it (or maybe it's that tentacle-sucking-my-insides-out type of attachment). However, I love interesting storylines, and it sounds like this one is pretty sweet.

Introduction
The game takes place in the future where Earth mines whole planets for minerals ("planet cracking"). USG Ishimura was one of these Planet Cracking ships that got caught up in something. You play as Isaac Clarke, an engineer that's been called to the USG Ishimura after receiving a distress signal.


Impressions
Since I haven't played the game myself, I'll just give you my impressions. Considering that the Flood in Halo actually kinda got me spooked out, I feel that if I ever play this game, I might just shit my pants. Something that really gets me interested in games is not the gameplay but the storyline. I really like games (no matter how simple or complicated) that have some interesting plot and develop it throughout the story. Just imagine what it would be like completely taking apart a planet for mining. What would you even encounter?

Apparently, some weird things called Necromorphs had taken over the ship and you basically find out more about the infestation and you slice your way through hordes of gory and grotesque pieces of flesh. After I got over the setting, I was actually looking at Isaac's actual suit/armor.

Super-Cool Mask
Isaac really wears something that I feel is realistic. You're a miner... so you might need a helmet/mask. It kind of reminded me of those masks you wear when you're welding things. But his mask looks very gothic and dark. It wouldn't be really surprising if he was a murderer in a horror-film but since he's the good guy, it feels so much more powerful. Too bad you might get your whole head bitten off by a Necromorph.

Lighting
Indescribably fantastic lighting makes the game more mysterious and will probably get you crawling closer to the screen before something jumps out of a air duct and impales you. Dead Space uses something called deferred shading which determines the texture/shade of an object in real-time. Most games have pre-defined shades in the environments so that a wall has a certain shade with the lights on and a different shade for a candle. Every situation has been pre-defined so you'll never find anything interesting in the walls. Deferred lighting determines what shade the wall needs to have while you play the game. So if there's multiple small light sources throughout the screen, then the walls will have some reflections appropriate to the situation. End-effect: everything looks spookier...

Real-Time Phobia
Everything is in real-time so even when you look through menus and stuff, the Necromorphs moving toward you will... keep moving towards you. There's no quick way to turn around other than to turn around the way you normally do. The sense of vulnerability keeps your heart racing every minute you play. The "weapons" are pretty interesting though since they are make-shift versions of mining equipment. Your Kinesis power let's you push and pull things around (in unlimited amounts). So feel free to grab some limbs and beat a Necromorph with it. The Statis power slows down objects. Probably very useful when you have angry dead things rushing towards you.

Never feel safe again, or at least not until you make Necromorphs into mush. Headshots don't work anymore. I used to feel so safe with a shotgot in Halo. In Dead Space, you have to dismember every limb before the Necromorph stops (I just hope arms don't move on their own).

In conclusion, you'll never feel safe in spaceships floating in the dark ever again. No really, considering I only look at games, this is the most exciting scare-myself-to-death game I've seen that I wouldn't mind buying a game console for.

Google PageRank: The Mathematics Behind It All

PageRank is some order for pages that rates them based on how important they are. Since "importance" is such a subjective term, how can you actually rank pages? Search engines have to solve this problem so they know what to display first. Luckily, I learned something interesting in my probability course about Google PageRank.

Let's start off with an amazing(ly vague) definition that tells us very little and a whole lot at the same time:

"A page has high rank if the sum of the ranks of its backlinks is high."

Wow. What a statement. Let's break it down.

What Is A Backlink?
It's when someone else links to your website. So it doesn't matter if you have a million links to other websites, it only matters if those million wesbites have links to you. Sounds simple enough.

So what if you have a thousands of dummy pages that all link to your page? Well, it would seem that your page gets a high rank then. However, how does Google prevent this? The pages that link to your page need to be important too. So if some big website links to you, you're somewhat important too.

Probability and Stationary Equations (for Math People)
Anyways, it turns out Google PageRank uses this nifty idea in probability involving stationary equations of Markov chains (anyone scared of math, close your eyes now and scroll to the end):

Putting it together, we get that the PageRank of page i is the sum of all the PageRanks of page j times the probability of it going to page i.

This is the exact formula for stationary equations in Markov chains. So now, if you have a bunch of dummy pages that link to your page, you're still not important because the probability that anyone goes to those dummy pages if very low (hence all of those PageRanks stay low). Now let's try to screw this thing up too.

What if you have some person that decides not link to anyone at all! Or maybe just links to itself. So if even one page has a link TO this page, then as time goes by, everyone will end up at this page and get "stuck" (we don't use the back button since we only follow links). This is called a deadend or spidertrap. In the stationary equations, what happens is that this page gets ALL the importance.

Taxation
One solution to this: taxation. Basically, "tax" everyone's page and take that percent and redistribute links randomly. So suppose there's a 30% tax. Then the probabilities of going through a link is only 70% of what it originally was. Then we take that 30%, and add a random link to some random page. So now, with probability 70%, the "spidertrap" goes back to itself. The other 30% goes to some other page(s).

So you might be thinking how do you calculate the probability of going from one webpage to another. Easy way: you don't! Just assume that you have equal probability. I guess there are better ways that might get only a slightly better answer, but to save time and calculation power, each link has an equal probability of being followed.

For the Non-Math People
So those that skipped over the previous section. Here's a summary: There's an interesting topic in probability called stationary equations that helps you find what "fraction" of the time you are on a webpage. Essentially, if you have a lot of high-ranked websites backlinking to you, many visitors are very likely spending lots of time on your webpage.

What if you try to hog all that importance? What if you don't put links out to other people? In theory (without the browser back button), visitors that come to your page will get "stuck" there. This is called a deadend or a spidertrap.

Taxes on Webpages (For Non-Math People)
Taxation solves this by solving the calculations in stationary equations with random links pointing from every page to every other page. In other words, it creates smaller and less important links that aren't really there when doing the calculations. So when you get stuck in some page, you can follow the non-existent link to something else. It's called a tax because you can think of it as though you're very unlikely to follow that non-existent link and the webpage loses some of it's PageRank (based on how big the tax is).


You can kind of think of it as money. Everyone gets money, everyone gives money. If someone only got money and never spent anything, you can imagine that over a long period of time, he would have most of the money in the world. The taxes basically take that money and give it back to everyone. (Think communism when you see 100% tax... everyone is equal).

Current Model
Google is constantly changing their PageRank algorithm but this is essentially the basis for their model. Understanding Google's PageRank can really help if you have a new website and you want become important really fast. Or if you're interested in working for Google (or planning on buying out Google), doesn't hurt to know this either.

Crack Windows Passwords

Are you really sure no one can figure out your Windows password? It turns out Windows doesn't do a really good job of hiding your password.

Anyone that has access to your Windows XP/Vista has access to your password. It's almost fun after you learn how to do it. What do you need?

SAMInside is a great program that is fairly quick too in figuring out your password. You do need to copy some essential files though.

It turns out that Windows XP/Vista store passwords in a file in C:\Windows\syster32\config. Two files to be exact. The first file is named "SAM" (stands for Security Accounts Manager). A hash of your password is stored here but it turns out the algorithm Windows uses is horrible. If your password is less than 14 characters, then it splits the password into two 7-character pieces. Another file tries to make this crappy method more "secure" by using some special system properties to encrypt the SAM. The exact information needed for this is stored in the "SYSTEM" file. Once you have both of these files, SAMInside can crack alphanumeric passwords in about 3 hours.

3 hours?! Ok...well maybe a bit longer for some of the weirder people that use punctuation/symbols. But does it really matter? Once a person just copies the SAM and SYSTEM files, you're screwed. Windows does make accessing these files difficult but there are really easy ways around this (boot using a different operating system for example). So what do you do?

1. Don't let anyone else touch your computer and make sure no one does... (I guess you could do this, but I prefer #2/#3...)
   
2. Make your passwords longer than 14 characters. Windows puts a different algorithm to hash your password (takes years/eons to crack passwords now).
3. Disable the LM hash.

So anyone who wants more information/details on any of this, I might have another post up later (or you could just ask).

Keep Track of the Newest Beta Software/Sites

Have you ever wondered how people catch on to trends and new ideas online a long time before they happen? I honestly have no idea but BetaNews and MoMB certainly do a great job of helping out.

I've had friends that caught on to Wikipedia ages before it really became something. And Google? I'm not sure about that but I'm sure I knew someone, who knew someone that caught on. Either way, I've always wanted to keep a close neck on new betas and other stuff going on around the web and these two websites have become my new way of doing so.

BetaNews is a great site for software and some new technology stuff. It tells you the newest beta software, gives you links, and even tells you what the software is meant to do. It is set up so you can focus on the beta software if you want, or you can simply be up-to-date on the latest software news. I guess that's how the also came up with their title (I is smurt!). So if you really wanna get your hands (and maybe get them dirty) in the newest software for free, this site will lead you in the right direction!

Another fabulous find is MoMB (The Museum of Modern Betas). I've got to say, this is a pretty great site. Sure it's in blog format (but who doesn't loves blogs, right?!), but this has got the coolest new social networking, file sharing, and miscellaneous new websites. This is probably your best bet on finding amazing sites before they get popularized. It looks like it might have predicted things like Twitter, Flickr, Del.icio.us, and bunches of other stuff.

So, for software, better bookmark BetaNews! And for wonderfully new websites, hold on to MoMB!

Push-Ups Made Easy

For the longest time, I've been wanting to do a lot of push-ups and be able to say, "Yup! I can do [insert big number here] push-ups!" But that devious little exercise always has me beat. Now, I think I may have a plan to beat it.

This does seem like the typical post you would find on health and fitness sites but this blog is gonna have it all (but mostly computer-related). But this summer, I had three goals in mind. One of them you already know (Java certification). The other one I had in mind was be able to do 50 push-ups (without breaks). I really didn't know how I was going to achieve this but I really didn't care. I had my mind set even though my current best was a weak 28-ish push-ups.

What Muscles Are Involved?
In fact, most people can only do around that amount. I would say you're doing fine if you can even do 20. So what the hell makes these damn things so hard? First of all, it works several muscles that people usually don't concentrate on(this is just my experience). As far as most people know, it works your upper body. Great! Off to a good start. It works your chest (pectoralis major). Alright. For those that go to the gym (or plan to), some bench presses can help that.

What about your arms? I mean half the motion comes from your arms! Some (maybe a lot) of people think it works your biceps. Having big biceps gives you a big arm right? So big biceps = more push-ups? No! In fact, your triceps have much more mass/volume in your arm than your biceps. So it's actually bigger triceps that can get you counting to 25 and more.

The most interesting thing I found out though was that doing push-ups also works your core (abs in general). Keeping your body straight and keeping balance while doing press-ups (as that call it in the UK) is all thanks to your core muscles. There's some other muscles that push-ups work but if you really want to know more about that, wiki it!

Routine
Alright, so how do I do more? Well, when I went to India this summer, I had a whole lot of time to do basically nothing. So what I did was...push-up! Ok, maybe not the whole time, but whenever I was feeling less lethargic than usual. My plan was basically do about 80% of my maximum number. Then shake off the tired feeling in your arms. Then do about 40% of my max. Then do as many as I can before I collapse.

Don't leave just yet. Thanks to my college roommate, I had found out you can do different kinds of push-ups to keep you going. So the everyday, average push-up is keeping your arms about shoulder-width apart. What my roommate calls wide push-ups are about 1.5 times your shoulder-width. Narrow push-up are basically those with your hands about typing-on-a-keyboard-distance apart (around 4 inches apart).

So I did 12 normal and 12 wide without any break. Then took a short 90 second break (you don't really have to be precise on the 90 seconds...I certainly wasn't). Just long enough until you can use your arms again. Then I did 12 narrow. Took a break. Then during my last part, did as many normal/wide push-ups as I could.

Make sure you really give your all out effort on the last part. Do it until you really can't push yourself up anymore. Like you'll fall to the floor (hopefully without smashing your face) and actually roll over onto your back so you can get up.

Thanks to all of that for several weeks, I can finally do 40 push-ups! Not at my goal yet but really close!

Striving for Hundred Push-Ups
It actually wasn't until I got back and did some surfing online did I find an amazing website that sets up a plan for being able to do 100 push-ups. 100?! Crazy! It's really informative and has you testing yourself on a weekly basis. The plan is structured so you're doing more push-ups every week yet still only working 3 days a week. Coincidentally enough, the site is called hundredpushups.com. I'll be starting out on about week 3 of this 6-week plan and hopefully I'll be able to reach my goal before my classes start!

No Need for a Shovel: Digg!

I can't believe I hadn't started using this earlier. Digg is amazing at keeping you up to date on new and interesting things happening around you. I really wish I registered to their site much earlier, but now that I've found it, I love it!

What's so cool about Digg? Well, it's basically articles from all over the web that people have found interesting. So instead of you having to waste time surfing the web (especially if you don't have much time on your hands), you can just see what others have found interesting (yeah, my vocabulary's limited: cool, interesting...).

Whenever you find an article tending to your tastes, you can "digg" it. Or if you don't like it and you think it's not worth mentioning, you can "bury" it. That's basically the basics. I really like how you can even digg/bury other people's comments. So if someone says something witty like, "I dig Digg", you can digg it!

If you guys are using RSS readers, good for you (more on RSS for those of you who don't). You can easily stay up-to-date on the latest, random junk and crap going around through Digg's RSS feed. And especially since I'm so addicted to fast crack...I mean crap, I really dig Digg!

And by the way, don't be surprised if you see a couple of my posts relating recent things on Digg... I swear, there's no correlation if you find such a trend... (not!).