Hotashi - Jack’s Blog

Google just finished digitizing newspapers that date back to early 1900s, for their news archives search.

For example, here’s an article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for the moon landing. Pretty cool eh?

So Globe & Mail’s archives search goes back to 2000, while Google’s goes back to early 1900s. And I think NY Times recently went back as far as 1800s? — or maybe early 1900s too. Globe and Fail!

I’m moving into an apartment in Toronto, and I still need get get an ISP so I can connect to the interwebs. I’m leaning towards rogers… but they just seem too evil for me to associate myself with. The transfer limits they introduced (60 GB for the Express plan) are just way too stupid. Why do you need 7 Mbps if you can only transfer 60 GB per month? Dicks!

I heard about this other ISP Teksavvy. They rent their lines from Bell who, like Rogers, does traffic shaping. However, Teksavvy seems to be a decent company, and they support Net Neutrality — they were on Parliment Hill protesting… where was Rogers and Bell? Oh wait, I don’t think they support Net Neutrality, just show them the $$$ and they’re happy! Also, Rogers actually breaks into your browsing sessions and rewrite the pages you view to warn you about going above the transfer limit.

Out of principal I want to go with Teksavvy. But for some reason I’m still leaning towards Rogers. I think it’ll be easier to just go with Rogers, and I’m not really sure what to expect from Teksavvy. Am I stupid? :P

PS. There is a forum where users discuss different ISP, and there is a section for Teksavvy.

I’ve been listening to the Japancast podcast recently in preparation for my trip to Japan. Japancast, which is run by Hitomi and Paul, is a website where people with varying skills in Japanese can go to and learn for free. There even a social network on their website for people to make friends whom they can practice Japanese with — like pen pals.

I regret not finding out about this earlier. I doubt I’ll remember that much for my trip, which is in a week. But, I’ll try to learn what I can. I’ll have a phrase book with me, so hopefully communication isn’t going to be too difficult.

If you work as a programmer then you know as well as anyone that you just can’t work so many hours in a row. For myself, I usually have to take a break after 2-3 hours of working max. Programming takes tremendous amounts of brain power, so have to take a breather every once in a while. I spent most of my free time reading blog posts, and I find it easier to use an RSS reader so you only have to go to one place to get all your blog-reading fix. I personally prefer using Bloglines, their interface is great — especially the new beta version. Another good choice is Google Reader, which you can actually incorporate into your iGoogle portal page. There are many others out there, so find one your like and use it. Now for the good part. :)

I’m gonna list the blogs I frequent the most, ordered by my visiting frequency.

1. Lifehacker: Hands down my favourite website to read. You get “tech tricks, tips and downloads for getting things done.” Some tips require a more technical-minded reader, but overall the instructions are pretty straightforward. This is IMO the #1 website to increase your productivity in life.
2. Racialicious: A blog dealing with racial issues in the US. Although the focus is mainly on American issues, most of it applies to Canada too. And it’s always good to know what’s going on in our neighbour south of the border.
3. Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters. This is purely a geek site, so if you’re not “into” the whole geek thing maybe you shouldn’t visit ;). It many topics, including gaming, new technologies, and politics. I find that I skip over most of the stories, but there are some great ones on there. Be sure to check out the comments too, I actually enjoy reading those over the actual articles themselves a lot of the times — RTFA!
4. Gizmodo: A website dedicated to gadgets. I think that pretty much says it all. It’s a place I go to, to see all the cool, shiny gadgets that I probably wouldn’t be buying. Did I mention they’re shiny?
5. Coding Horror: A must-read for an programmers. Jeff Atwood writes about coding horrors that programmers create, aka the “human factors.” He provides great insight into many problems, including ones that seem trivial at first glance, like writing an algorithm to shuffling a deck of cards.
6. Joel on Software: Joel is one of the most well-known programmers out there. He heads Fog Creek, the company that makes FogBugz. The must-read post is his talk on Computer Science and Software Engineering that he gave at Yale (parts 2 and 3 too!).
7. Ajaxian: Probably the best blog to read for any developers working with Javascript, and of course Ajax (as the name suggests).
8. RedFlagDeals: Deals on many different products for the Canadian buyers. They have have many deals added everyday, including deals on many electronic products.
9. The Daily WTF: Readers submit their WTF stories working in the tech industry. Mainly just for laughs.

All of the above sites provide RSS feeds, so you can subscribe to them using your favourite RSS reader.

I recently read an article about how the new generation of kids are replacing e-mails with facebook messages and text phone messages. Has it really come time for the e-mail to be retired in favour of the more “hip” alternatives? I think not.

Text messages and facebook (or any social network) are not replacement for e-mails. Yes, people use e-mails for a quick message here and there, but it offers a lot more than that. Have you ever tried to CC or BCC people on a facebook message? What about forwarding or including more people in future replies? What about sending a message with an attachment? You get the idea. IMO, what people use facebook and texting for now is more like what instant messengers (IM) does than what e-mails do. They’re fine for sending a quick message here and there. But if I’m starting a conversation that I might want to search for later on, I’ll stick to my Gmail with its awesome search engine. Even with my IMs I can archive chats on the filesystem, which I can use Google Desktop to search through later on.