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Blog Code Formatting

2008-11-20T19:43:00.000-08:00

I finally added code formatting to my blog. I used a completely 'client side' javascript library called syntaxhighlighter, hosted on Google Code. Note that I'm currently linking javascript directly from their web facing SVN repository, so I'm not sure how stable it is (but hosting it on googlepages didn't seem to work (they disallow js linking I believe)).

Although it is a technology blog, I thought I posted more code about stuff. I only seem to have two posts where I actually put up any code (But maybe that's because it was horribly formatted?), and they now both have pretty Java and XML formatting:

Maybe one of these days, I'll find use for a blog again. The whole concept of blogging seems so dead.

My Yahoo! Answers Science Post

2008-04-02T12:55:00.000-07:00

I am my dad's personal Yahoo! answers person when it comes to things science and physics. So when I received a question on the dual nature of light and matter, I wrote him back a nice long (LFP!) email in answer. I thought I'd share.

Question:

Sound travels in waves and needs an "ether" for transmission.
Light is also a wave but doesn't need an ether. Is light in space "wave" or "particle"? because when light bends do particles bend or this this one of the examples of light as wave?

Answer:

Sound is a pressure wave. It is the compressing of molecules. It is the compression that is the sound.

Light is a wave of electromagnetic fields, fields in this case being force representations. The light wave is a constant of nature in which a electric force changing will produce a magnetic force which will cause an electric force in a stable, repeating way traveling forward. There are other places where electricity creates magnetic forces and vice versa, but they are not stable and not self-contained.

When material is present, those electromagnetic forces exert themselves into a single point, which is what is classically defined as a particle. Light in space is then always a "wave", since that is the way it propagates itself and travels.

When light is in a perfect vacuum, its speed is constant at c. When light is traveling through a material, the speed is slower than c, based on a calculation related to its "index of refraction". This quantity is the change at which an electromagnetic wave will move forward while remaining self-contained and stable.

The 'index of refraction' is the change in velocities between material boundaries causing an apparent difference in the way that light is 'seen' (this is velocity that have direction now, not speed which is a directionless quantity). This is the reason you put a pencil in a glass of water, it seems to fracture or "refract" at the air-water boundary since the speed of light in each material is different.

So light never "bends". What light bending is usually described that way because it is passing through things in which the velocity of the electromagnetic wave is different. This is the case of seeing mirages of water when the light from the sky bends up; the index of refraction of the air is temperature dependent.

how i saved my windows xp installation with knoppix

2008-03-10T11:05:00.000-07:00

so its true. the difference between a 'digital native' and a 'digital immigrant' is the amount of information that they contribute to the world. I absolutely hate having to wade through google searches to find an answer to my problems, so I try to post here about some of my tech adventures (even though it might be nerdy) hoping that one day a spider would come and crawl/index it and provide answers to people for the same questions I couldn't find answers to!

So I tried to upgrade the ATI Radeon drivers on my Windows machine for my old video card (thinking it would improve performance! hah! no.) but I could not get Direct3d to work for my ol' Radeon 9500. After the 26 or so re-boots fiddling with the hardware, the hardware connections and the hardware drivers, something finally happened to my Windows XP OS partition. It got fried.

I tried to boot up, but after the BIOS loaded I would get the error: Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM You can try to repair this file by starting the Windows Setup program from original floppies or boot from CD-ROM. Select 'r' at first screen to repair

I did searches all over the internets to fix my problem, that of a corrupt WindowsXP SYSTEM registry, which caused my XP installation to not boot. Microsoft has a whole knowledge base article about this exact issue! Well, thats fine... just load up your version of XP from a CD (or floppy) and hit 'r' to repair, just like it says. Wait, except I have a SATA drive... and there is no native SATA drivers for those on the Windows XP CD! So Windows XP install CD does not see a valid drive with Windows on it to repair!

Damn.

I love this install of Windows, this drive has been with me since pre-Service Pack 1 days. Lots of tweaks (which caused the problem?) and lots of customization has made it unlike any other windows install I've used over the years. I wasn't about to just re-image the drive after backing up the data.

So I gave Knoppix a try. For those that don't know what it is, it is a Linux Live CD (meaning you run Linux from RAM and swap space) and supposedly contains lots of windows repair utilities. Booting it up, it had no problem seeing the SATA drives, booted into the OS and everything was fine. I was using the newest version, version 5.1.

I found the backup system registry 'hive' files at /System Volume Information/_restore/[Text String] and copied them to the desktop. Renamed them to be the operational one, but the Knoppix disk would not let me write back to the hard drive!

There is a problem with NTFS. The NTFS file system is a Microsoft proprietary OS whose protocols have been reverse engineered by the open source community. There are a couple different ways to make the NTFS formatted hard disk available.


mount -t ntfs /dev/hda1 /mnt/c

Which is the approximate default command in the /etc/fstabBut this command only allows the NTFS disk to be read, since the mount command (even with the -rw option) doesn't allow NTFS partitions to be written to. Everywhere on the internets talks about this, that there could be problems with corruption if users were allowed to write directly to the file system using the mount command. So I couldn't fix the registry hive this way.

So I went into alternate mounting techniques to allow the partition to be written to. Supposedly there is a program called CaptiveNFS (captive-ntfs) that is available on older versions of Knoppix, but wasn't availiable on 5.1. So I downloaded Knoppix 3.6, only to find out that CaptiveNFS wasn't supported any longer and did not work with Windows XP SP2. Shucks, again.

The problem, of course, was information overload.

Of course, Knoppix 5.1 came with utilities to write to an NTFS partition, it is noted as being the distro that allows users to recover windows partitions! There are two utilities: ntfschdsk, ntfsmount that do what I need: check the disk for corruption (and auto-correct things if it can) and mount the NTFS partition to write.

Running ntfschdsk I received:


CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)
Deleting index entry .DEFAULT in index $I30 od file 30. 
73 percent completed.

So at least one entry was corrupt on the disk. Not a problem though, remount the partition with ntfsmount command. Then went into the previous registry save state and copied the following files DEFAULT, SAM, SECURITY, SOFTWARE, SYSTEM from /System Volume Information/_restore/[Text String] (where Text String is some naming auto-archiving naming convention) to the /windows/system32/config directory, overwriting the corrupted hive files.

Reboot the machine, the machine reads in the non-corrupted backup Registry Hives. Instant (instant being over the course of 3 days) success!

Hopefully, someone finds this post on the 5th page of google searches and finds what they need.

Originally written 12/10/2007 - finally posted 03/10/2008!

The Internets Is Scary Sometimes

2008-03-10T10:01:00.001-07:00

Sometimes, you think that you are covered on the internets (all of them!), but then I get an email like this to my primary account:

As a courtesy, we are notifying you that XXXXXX users have found the following accounts for you:

   Flickr tmarthal on Flickr
   Digg tmarthal on Digg
   MySpace birddog on MySpace
   Picasa marthaler on Picasa

If you would like to make these accounts private, please
change the privacy settings on the original network and
XXXXXX will update its search results to reflect your changes.

To find your friends on XXXXXX, signup now.

I removed the company that sent the email, not sure that I want to encourage this type of email and account harvesting.

The point is, that someone, somewhere has correlated my different accounts on my various networks to my single email signon. Someone, somewhere knows my that the articles dugg on digg are associated with the pictures that I post on flikr! So, when I don't post anything, they can check my pictures to find out what I was doing!

They missed twitter, delicious, slashdot, facebook and this blog though! And all of my troll accounts! Thats tood to know that there is some anonymity!

Spring Framework Sample Main Method

2008-02-05T19:05:00.000-08:00

So my desk-mate* and I were having a conversation about an upcoming coding project, and he remarked how nice it was for someone, somewhere to post a complete sample on their blog for the spiders to index, so that he can find it. So I thought I would also, pay it forward and hopefully someone in like 2012 comes by and needs a sample main method using the spring spring framework for application level dependency injection.

Everyone out there seems to have used the MVC and deploying spring based apps in a web server WAR file. Except for this link: Levarage Spring Web development with Offspring. [Offtopic: it uses classes in the com.offspring.* package, like the band's website!] It uses a simple bean file and a main method really close to the following snippet to instantiate (that's my new favorite word) the application using the spring context**:

import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;
import com.blogger.tmarthal.listener.SampleListenerInterface;

/**
 * simple class showing the a listener interface
 * starting listening
 */
public class simpleParserAndStorage
{
  /**
   * The spring context main method
   * @param args
   */
  public static void main(String[] args)
  {
    if (args.length != 1) {
      System.out.println("Usage: java parser.java ");
      System.exit(1);
    }

    String springContextFile = args[0];
    System.out.println(springContextFile);
    ApplicationContext context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(springContextFile);

    // the listener just starts listening
    SampleListenerInterface listener = (SampleListenerInterface) context.getBean("listener");
    listener.startListening();
  }
}

Now, the wiring, or what sort of implementation is the SampleListenerInterface? This is where dependency injection comes in. Depending on the type of thing you are listening for (or what the example is doing) the implementation class is going to change. The main method is going to remain the same, the bean wiring takes place in the xml file, rather than in the application logic.

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 <!DOCTYPE beans PUBLIC "-//SPRING//DTD BEAN//EN" "http://www.springframework.org/dtd/spring-beans.dtd">
 <beans>
    <bean id="listenerHelper" class="com.blogger.tmarthal.listener.SampleListenerHelperInterfaceImpl">
    </bean>

    <bean id="listener" class="com.blogger.tmarthal.listener.SampleListenerInterfaceImpl">
      <!-- location of what it is listening on, passed in as constructor arguments -->
      <constructor-arg><value>localhost</value></constructor-arg>
      <constructor-arg><value>10001</value></constructor-arg>
      <!-- and it refers to a different class that would help it listen -->
      <constructor-arg><ref bean="listenerHelper"/></constructor-arg>
    </bean>
 </beans>

So, assuming that there is a Interface implementation of SampleListenerInterfaceImpl and SampleListenerHelperInterfaceImpl in the classpath, then the spring framework will call the listen method of the SampleListenerInterfaceImpl class!

Pretty neat. Hopefully someone, sometime stumbles upon this example trying to get into writing a non-WAR spring framework application, and this post will be helpful to them. I wish I found something like this first. :)

* no, not my office mate: we share a desk
** i know the code formatting sucks

Dolphins Make Me Happy

2007-11-09T11:45:00.000-08:00

Lately, I'm not sure if its part of a seasonal migration or something, but there seems to be a lot more dolphins in the water. And they seem to be a lot more playful. Meaning, they swim under/close to us when we are surfing and jump and twist out of the water pretty frequently. I should get pictures. They also seem to show up when we are surfing right when a huge set is about to roll in, and the dolphins always seem to ride the set waves while I try to survive the overhead+ sets.

So anyways, read this today: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21689083/

Basically dolphins showing altruistic tendencies towards a surf and protecting him while in the ocean. So they know we're out there. I wonder if they hear me when I jump in the water and screech back to them. :)

</happy>

double-tap it

2007-11-05T16:31:00.000-08:00

So, oftentimes on my iphone I would unlock it and my ipod controls would come up. I thought it was a bug for a long time, since the controls went away so fast... but it is a feature!

It turns out you can access the iphone ipod controls while the phone is locked or in a different menu than the ipod interface by double-tapping the home button! So, double tapping to wake goes directly to the ipod interface pause button... handy when people are trying to talk to you and you're listening to music! You can also double tap from any interface and the ability to fast-forward/rewind/pause comes up. Neat-o.

Are undocumented features like this a reason to upgrade your firmware? This is only a iphone 1.1.1 September 2007 update feature or something.

I've got the whole internet in my hands

2007-10-25T11:11:00.000-07:00

Following up the xkcd.com "comic", a sweet idea to map the IP address range and their owners into a 2d map (where all adjacent values are grouped together), some bored people over at an email consulting company mapped out the IP addresses and activities using actual CAIDA 'whois' data in a scalable google map. CAIDA (The Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis) collected the data as seen in the huge png:

Huge CAIDA PNG

The scalable 'google maps' like viewing of the Hilbert Table is here:

http://thewholeinternet.wordtothewise.com/

I should be all Blog2.0 and post this as a trackback, but they don't have the option.

It is pretty neat to take data that you normally don't visualize, in this case the assigned DNS IP ranges of organizations and put them together in a way that can make the lay-person understand something new. In this case, you can see the companies that 'formed', or at least were the first to embrace, the internet and register whole top level domains! Meaning, of the 4-256 values in a typical IPv4 these companies have a whole first number to themselves.

For example, The Computer Science Corporation 'CSC' owns the whole 20.*.*.* address range. Crazy.

updated blog license

2007-09-13T19:03:00.000-07:00

i know that i'm not a major player in the content creation business (I just know those kids in Japan are stealing my blogs, translating them, and calling them their own!!) but I put the license at the bottom here, the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. That's what the Creative Commons tells me when I select Yes to "Allow commercial uses of your work?" and "Allow modifications of your work?". So, all of you people re-mashing my sweet blog via your Pipes or Mashups, then feel free. =)

I also reduced the number of posts on the front page (soon my xmlrpc blogpost will have scrolled off) and added the archival links at the bottom. Enjoy.

iphone news

2007-09-05T12:03:00.000-07:00

What this post boils down to is $100 for 2 months of sweet iphone usage. =)

I can't say that I'm disappointed, my $499 4GB iPhone purchase was a sunk cost, and I expected some 'early adopter' problems. I did not expect news that apple would cost them so aggressively so soon. Today apple released news that they are getting rid of the 4GB iphone models and dropping the price of the 8GB version to $399.

Pretty crazy. But the last two months were worth the hundo! We do throw them out of windows, you know.

And in a suprising move, jobs offers $100 credit back to early iPhone adopters! There is a first time for everything, I guess.

My First iPhone Problem and Post: Google Maps Hardlocking

2007-07-09T17:28:00.000-07:00

I had been using my iPhone without a problem since I got it opening day, June 29th at the Manhattan Beach Apple Store. [Thanks fulk dog for waiting in line!] Everything was awesome; contacts, pictures, youtube, Safari integration, everything. No problem activating it, like others have reported.

I didn't usually let people handle it, I'm crazy like that, because they would have no idea where to start. So I would show them around all of the features; usually open up my Boards of Canada video to display the screen, surf the contacts and show them how to put their number into the phone, and/or show them Safari and my friend Deward's blog (since it looks super nice in the iPhone browser) depending on if I was on a wireless network or AT&T's EDGE. Take a picture, show them some pictures from that bar crawl from mid-June. Normal things that you would do with an integrated device that bills itself as a revolution!

So, fast forward to last Saturday night. I let my friend's sister borrow my iphone just to play around with everything. He is technically apt, so I thought he could navigate the menu with minimal advice ("Just hit the Home button to reset any interface."). I was wrong. This was in Manhattan Beach, which has notoriously bad network coverage between Highland Ave. and the beach (due to the housing height and density, called "The Beach District"). He hands it back to me after like 5 minutes with "I think I broke it." No problem I thought, he just couldn't get back to the home screen. Well, that wasn't the case.

The iPhone was stuck in the Google Maps application with the /Manhattan Beach, CAirvine/ text, which is an obvious mistyped search into the search bar of Google Maps. I'm not sure if it was the maps application or the lowsy EDGE connection, but it was frozen, half-dimmed with neither of the buttons working: holding down the Home key, or the On/Off toggle at the top did not seem to do anything**. Even plugging the phone into iTunes did not remove the lock. I had to do a Factory Reset via the iTunes interface to remove the Google Maps hardlocked screen. Sucks.

'Cause after using the phone for 2 weeks, I already had multiple pictures, Wireless settings, and histories built up that were cleared. All of the pictures taken with the camera that were not emailed off the phone are lost, my long ass password for my WPA account had to be re-typed, and my Youtube and Safari bookmarks and history were gone. Luckily, it sync'ed my contacts and everything else. (installing gcaldemon now to test it out...)

I guess that is what you get when you are an early iphone adopter. It is worth it though. ;)

** Supposedly holding down both buttons at once will hardboot the iphone. 20/20 hindsight

my foray into xmlrpc - calling perl from java

2007-07-02T18:25:00.000-07:00

XMLRPC is supposedly the new RPC mechanism to handle remote method calls independent of programming language, platform type, or location. Basically, it is how CORBA was supposed to be. Of course, it formats data into xml packaged into an HTTP message. This is not SOAP though, and I still don't really know the difference, other than SOAP is a the packaging for WebServices and has its own strict way of defining method and method arguments(?). Anyways, XML-RPC sounds perfect to get some crappy Perl to Java method calls working!

The problem as I see it, is that the XMLRPC mechanism is usually "extended" to handle language specific needs. This makes things a lot easier when you are using it to call remote methods in a uniform environment. The problem is that thats not what I want, as extensions in Java will make the Perl methods die. A horrible death.

In Perl there are two cpan modules that facilitate the XMLRPC mechanism that I tried: RPC::XML and XMLRPC::Transport in the SOAP::Lite package. I tried the XMLRPC::Transport package with no results (meaning I couldn't get it to work), but after installing the RPC::XML package and using the examples provided at this page (beware the text ads!). It seemed to get things working via his provided Client (on Page 3) and Server (Page 2) examples. His provided sample client and server perl uses only the non-extended XMLRPC mechanisms. Nice. [Note: I did not include links to Mr. Yang's perl because he might care about licenses and stuff (he copyrights his examples! ]

So anyways, what I did was write up some Java code to interface with Mr. Yang's Perl. Here is the example class, using the apache xmlrpc jars. The jar files** can be found at the Apache Web Service Page and are licensed under the Apache License.

import org.apache.xmlrpc.client.XmlRpcClient;
import org.apache.xmlrpc.client.XmlRpcClientConfigImpl;
import org.apache.xmlrpc.client.XmlRpcCommonsTransportFactory;

import java.net.URL;
import java.util.HashMap;

/**
 * 03/2007 hello from tmarthal :: tmarthal.blogspot.com
 *
 * sample xmlrpc client using Apache's common xmlrpc-client classes to interface with a sample perl xmlrpc
 * server provided on the interwebs at http://www.herongyang.com/perl_b/rpc_xml_3.html
 *
 * The methods are (from the webpage):
 *  It offers 3 methods: com.herong.hello, com.herong.getCelsius, and com.herong.getInfo.
    - com.herong.hello has one signature: return type of string, and no input argument. Its handler function is defined inside the add_method call.
    - com.herong.getCelsius has two signatures. The first one requires no input argument, and the second one requires one "double" argument.
    - com.herong.getInfo has one signature of returning an 'array'. The corresponding handler function returns a reference to a list. The server knows how to convert the content of the reference to an 'array'.
 *
 * There are also two XML:RPC system calls that get the list of available methods and method arguments:
    - system.listMethods returns an array of strings which are the names of the methods
    - system.methodSignature returns the HashMap of method name to string arguments
 *
 */
public class XmlRpcClientExample {

    public XmlRpcClientExample() { }

    private static final String SERVER_URL = "http://localhost:8001";


    public double getCelcius(double temp) {
     double value = 0.0;
        try {
            XmlRpcClientConfigImpl config = new XmlRpcClientConfigImpl();
            config.setServerURL(new URL(SERVER_URL));
            config.setEnabledForExtensions(true);
            config.setConnectionTimeout(60 * 1000);
            config.setReplyTimeout(60 * 1000);

            XmlRpcClient client = new XmlRpcClient();


            // use Commons HttpClient as transport
            client.setTransportFactory(new XmlRpcCommonsTransportFactory(client));
            // set configuration
            client.setConfig(config);

            // make the a regular call
            Object[] params = new Object[] { new Double(temp) };

            //TM Calculator is the name of the handler on the server side
            // and add is the method call
            Object result = (Object) client.execute("com.herong.getCelsius", params);

            // autobox / Java 5.0
            value = (Double) result;
            System.out.println("result = " + value);
        }
        catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        return value;
    }

    public String[] listMethods() {
     String[] methods = null;
     try {
      XmlRpcClientConfigImpl config = new XmlRpcClientConfigImpl();
      config.setServerURL(new URL(SERVER_URL));
      config.setEnabledForExtensions(true);
      config.setConnectionTimeout(60 * 1000);
      config.setReplyTimeout(60 * 1000);

      XmlRpcClient client = new XmlRpcClient();


      // use Commons HttpClient as transport
      client.setTransportFactory(new XmlRpcCommonsTransportFactory(client));
      // set configuration
      client.setConfig(config);

      // Null input
      Object[] params = null;

      // RPC
      Object result = client.execute("system.listMethods", params);

      // Cast the result as a list of objects
      try {
       Object[] methodsObjects = (Object[]) result;
       methods = new String[methodsObjects.length];

       for (int i=0; i < methodsObjects.length; i++) {
        methods[i] = (String) methodsObjects[i];
        System.out.println(i + " " + methods[i]);
       }
      }
      catch (ClassCastException e) {
       e.printStackTrace();
      }

     } catch (Exception e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
     }
     return methods;
    }


    public HashMap<Integer, String[]> methodSignature(String method) {
     HashMap<Integer,String[]> signature = new HashMap<Integer,String[]>();
     try {
      XmlRpcClientConfigImpl config = new XmlRpcClientConfigImpl();
      config.setServerURL(new URL(SERVER_URL));
      config.setEnabledForExtensions(true);
      config.setConnectionTimeout(60 * 1000);
      config.setReplyTimeout(60 * 1000);

      XmlRpcClient client = new XmlRpcClient();


      // use Commons HttpClient as transport
      client.setTransportFactory(new XmlRpcCommonsTransportFactory(client));
      // set configuration
      client.setConfig(config);

      // method
      Object[] params = new Object[] { method };

      // RPC
      Object result = client.execute("system.methodSignature", params);

      // Cast the result as a list of objects
      try {
       Object[] returns = (Object[]) result;

       for (int k=0;k<returns.length;k++) {

        Object[] methodsObjects = (Object[]) returns[k];
        String[] methods = new String[methodsObjects.length];

        for (int i=0; i< methodsObjects.length; i++) {
         methods[i] = (String) methodsObjects[i];
         //System.out.println(i + " " + methods[i]);
        }
        signature.put(k,methods);
       }
      }
      catch (ClassCastException e) {
       e.printStackTrace();
      }

     } catch (Exception e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
     }
     return signature;
    }


    public String hello() {
     String returnString = "";
        try {
            XmlRpcClientConfigImpl config = new XmlRpcClientConfigImpl();
            config.setServerURL(new URL(SERVER_URL));
            config.setEnabledForExtensions(true);
            config.setConnectionTimeout(60 * 1000);
            config.setReplyTimeout(60 * 1000);

            XmlRpcClient client = new XmlRpcClient();


            // use Commons HttpClient as transport
            client.setTransportFactory(new XmlRpcCommonsTransportFactory(client));
            // set configuration
            client.setConfig(config);

            // make the a regular call
            Object[] params = null;

            //TM Calculator is the name of the handler on the server side
            // and add is the method call
            Object result = (Object) client.execute("com.herong.hello", params);

            returnString = (String) result;
        }
        catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        return returnString;
    }

    public String[] getInfo() {
     String[] info = null;
     try {
      XmlRpcClientConfigImpl config = new XmlRpcClientConfigImpl();
      config.setServerURL(new URL(SERVER_URL));
      config.setEnabledForExtensions(true);
      config.setConnectionTimeout(60 * 1000);
      config.setReplyTimeout(60 * 1000);

      XmlRpcClient client = new XmlRpcClient();


      // use Commons HttpClient as transport
      client.setTransportFactory(new XmlRpcCommonsTransportFactory(client));
      // set configuration
      client.setConfig(config);

      // Null input
      Object[] params = null;

      // RPC
      Object result = client.execute("com.herong.getInfo", params);

      // Cast the result as a list of objects
      try {
       Object[] infoObjects = (Object[]) result;
       info = new String[infoObjects.length];

       for (int i=0; i< infoObjects.length; i++) {
        if (infoObjects[i].getClass().equals(String.class)) {
         info[i] = (String) infoObjects[i];
        }
        else if (infoObjects[i].getClass().equals(Integer.class)){
         Integer castedInteger = (Integer) infoObjects[i];
         info[i] = (String) castedInteger.toString();
        }
        else {
         continue;
        }
        System.out.println(i + " " + infoObjects[i]);
       }
      }
      catch (ClassCastException e) {
       e.printStackTrace();
      }

     } catch (Exception e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
     }
     return info;
    }


    public static void main(String[] args) {
        XmlRpcClientExample  x = new XmlRpcClientExample();
        x.listMethods();
        x.getCelcius(100.0);
        x.methodSignature("system.listMethods");
        //System.out.println(x.hello());
        x.getInfo();
    }
}

I hope the <code> tag CSS works! (Just in case, I used the outdated pre tag as well). The for loop iterators and Java Generic markup had to be replaced. :(

The reason that I published this, instead of just keeping it is that XML-RPC resources from the web are lacking. Example code to interface between the Apache xmlrpc and Perl's XML::RPC package are non-existent. At least, with my limited google-fu, nothing turned up that would help me, so maybe Blogger will spyder this into a google search and be helpful to the one developer that finds this blog when looking for an example. Note that an IBM Web Development link "Utilize XML-RPC in Perl" was also helpful as a reference. If you read that and still can't figure out how to implement the methods in the linked code, comment here or find me and I can help.

** The jar files used are xmlrpc-client-3.0.jar, xmlrpc-common-3.0.jar, commons-codec-1.3.jar, common-logging-1.1.jar, ws-commons-util.1.0.1.jar, commons-httpclient-3.0.1.jar

xkcd

2007-05-15T18:57:00.000-07:00

The webcomic xkcd was recently featured on a popular tech website which I frequent. The author spoke at mit about his life and writing (and was interuppted by students), so I started reading the comic. Man, is it good.

I just started reading them, and got lots of the way through. Then I realized that there is a second level of awesome, in the img alt text tags. And then I read most of them again.

Some of my favs, in no particular order:

http://xkcd.com/c181.html - Interweb Net Codes!
http://xkcd.com/c113.html - Zeta Functions 4 Pres!
http://xkcd.com/c128.html - :-(
http://xkcd.com/c132.html - 4 d3w4rd

ipod shuffle

2007-01-17T12:02:00.001-08:00

So i broke down and got my 2nd ipod, a 1gb ipod shuffle. Since my 4gb 1st generation ipod nano is stuck in my truck's dashboard (most likely still playing the same thing \=)) with my 'USA Spec IPOD Interface' Toyota connector. Hopefully this will be my more 'used' ipod (aka updated regularly and listened to at the office, during outdoor activities, and in the bathroom).

It was set to shuffle and the first track was my favorite Kanye West track Gone. Wear your music! yay! \o/

i need to do some css editing with those dang labels. p.s. i still rule

CSS Templates and Blog Spam

2007-01-16T16:16:00.000-08:00

So, I was perusing my other blog today and deleted a drug spam comment for the third or fourth time in as many days from one of the more recent posts. In this case, it was my friend Jake dancing in leotards... but the spam comments are always there, always posted on the top message.

Prior to this, the blog spammers, people that post either poker referrals, drug purchase links, 'hot' stocks, online diplomas [almost as bad as the USC DEN program!], or money making schemes all seem to never have posted on this '...' blog. I used to think that it was because it had custom CSS that I use to display the pages, and that comment bots couldn't figure out which link to click when they came to my page.

That can't be the case now though; I think that more and more pennies/day workers are being paid to drive views to sites rather than bots. I have to say that is the case, I had 15 comments my museum post which is pretty crazy considering I get like 1 unique visitor a month here and almost no real traffic [maybe I should talk about the iphone too!?].

To fight this I've turned on the blogger captchas, but still allow anonymous posts. I've also upgraded to the new blogger, but I can't tell any difference (other than the label/tag support [for which I didn't add to my CSS? hrrm]). *shrug*

Smithsonian Museum Day

2006-09-19T10:22:00.000-07:00

This September 30th, 2006 is Museum Day!. The Smithsonian Institution started a free admission day a while back and most museums around the country (even if they already offer free admission) are getting into the spirit of the free Museum day! It's a Saturday ferchrissakes, nothing better to do that day (USC has an away game).

So go to the What is Museum Day? website already and print out the admission card located there. Wherever you are located, there is a museum nearby participating!

There are so many sweet places to go: maybe get my bro to head to the defense museum in San Diego, check out the only museum with only electronic art, maybe see some quilts (I'm big into quilting!), or just see one of the many art museums located around LA.

WIHSTGW =(

hoodies

2006-09-12T23:02:00.000-07:00

So, some of you might not know this, but I am very particular (peculiar?) about my hooded sweat shirts. I usually buy 2-3 new hoodies per year, and end up not liking most of them due to shoulder-area fit, color change, sleeve cuff, softness, waist area cinch type, or depth-of-hood. (Yeah, like I said peculiar).

There are two general types of hooded sweat shirts, flat-fronts and zip-ups.

Flat-Front Hoodies: These are normal sweat shirt shirts, but with an added pocket in the front and a hood (which makes it the hoodie).
Zip-Ups: These have the same hood, but zip up in the front. They sometimes have no pocket but most have have a split front pocket.

Well, this isn't about the criminal nature of hooded sweatshirts, or the fashion, but a zit pick about zip-up hoodies: Zippers!!

Most of the cheaper zip up hoodies come with plastic zippers. They are fine for the first couple months, but if worn in extreme cold (like while snowboarding), plastic zippers have a tendency to break teeth. Plastic zippers also have a tendency to not lye straight: they warp in the direction out of the zipper, causing ungainly bulges in the stomache region. That is the reason I prefer metal zippers.

Generally, higher quality hoodies come with metal zippers. This is because IMO most higher quality 'softgoods' are produced by companies that tend to make heavier outerwear as well, which generally come with metal zippers for the cold-breakage described above.

So I bought a very nice black zip-up Four Square hoodie last year while in New Mexico which has a nice flanel-pattern waterproof mesh lining. It had everything I look for in a hoodie: color, fit, hood shape, warmth, quality metal zipper; everything. The problem was, when I went to bust it out last spring I could not get the zipper to work!

The metal zipper was stuck; it would not connect and link up the teeth as if there was a string jammed in there or something. If anyone knows, most aficionados wear thier zip-up hoodies 3/4 zipped up, and this would just not do. I tried everything all summer long, it seemed like the zipper was bent or something and all my efforts with wrenches, knives, pliers, and assorted tools would not get it to work.

So I tried WD-40. The zipper zipped right up. It had rusted over. I did not know such a thing was possible. The same elements that the metal zipper is to protect against, are prone to cause rust as well. Good thing a little grease made it good, else I would've had to buy another hoodie this fall... as it stands I think I have at least one as we head into the winter months.

Do you people think about hoodies as much as I do? This blog is sweet.

You are here, it is now. Start.

2006-08-11T01:00:00.000-07:00

Surfing Costa Rica

2006-08-09T17:31:00.000-07:00

A Set Wave
Originally uploaded by tmarthal.

So, as a followup to the last post about going on a surf trip and blogging; it has taken me a whole month to get the motivation to finalize the post about the trip.

Well, it was worth the time and effort to get down there. I would highly recommend travelling to Costa Rica to anyone thinking of a tropical place to relax and surf. If I had to do it over again, I would do somethings differently. I would not fly into San Jose. We were staying in Tamarindo, a 45 minute drive south of another international airport in Liberia. Shoulda just flew into Liberia instead of San Jose. The cost to take the costa rica regional air taxi was $80 each way, not including the $25 for the board bag. A $10 shuttle from Liberia to Tamarindo would have been much more affordable, covering the additional cost of flying into the smaller airport. That doesn't include almost getting into a car accident in the San Jose taxi (not as bad as the Tijuana taxis though!).

I'm including a link to a picture uploaded to flikcr just so people can see just how good the surf was. It was one of the bigger waves on the Tamarindo beach break, but it was definetly breaking better than anything in Manhattan Beach.

blog to surf; surf to blog

2006-06-07T09:24:00.000-07:00

So, every once in awhile I get the bug up my ass to write something on my blog. I have been updating my moblog more because I can do it whenever and from my phone (and pictures=10³ words). Oftentimes, I write something then realize that the article isn't worth publshing so a one to two sentence non-posted saved idea 'post' will reside in my queue for a while until I realize that it wasn't ever worth posting in the first place and it gets deleted. I don't want to blog about blogging too much, but I can't and won't update this site because:

i am too 'busy' staring at the my work computerscreen
i am traveling too much (ABQ?)
nothing of interest in the tech world that i understand well enough to comment on
all the recurring events in my life remain the same (which makes them recurring)

So I wonder what event I could blog about? Hrrm, maybe my big vacation of the year? Yeah.

So I'm going to Costa Rica tommorow, specifically Tamarindo on the Pacific side in the NW portion of the country. Flying on LACSA airlines between the big cities and then taking a taxi flight on Nature Air over to Tamarindo. We are staying at The Surf House[flash site] down there right on the water and near downtown Tamarindo. I can't wait.

The surf is pumping in Central America; the SW swell should build up to 12ft through Friday with fair conditions. I am kinda scared and kinda stoked to get on it, I wonder how this Cali surfer will fare in the 17s periodic surf on a point break with a rock bottom. Totally different than the 6s sandy bottom walled up Manhattan Beach and El Porto beach break.

I will most definetly post some of the more interesting pictures here when I get back .

Not totally offtopic, but I think my dad dent me this article about Hurrican Katrina and the horrible Red Tide we had last fall: St Petersburg Times Article (I don't even know where St. Petersburg is!).

mobloggin'

2006-02-27T11:47:00.000-08:00

Testing a moblog text post

So, I finally got around to setting up my blogger.com mobile phone blog for phone image storage and auto-publication of blog entries from my phone keypad. ^_^

Setting up the Go Blogger service was not like anything I'd ever done before; the user starts the process by sending a text message! Then using a reply text message with an automatically created temp URL and pass-code, you link the pass code and mobile phone number to your blog by logging into the blogger.com website, which knows your phone number!. The auto-integration of mobile phone technology and blog services is crazy (like the glue!). After registration, of course, the images are auto-updated to the blog you associated with your phone number! Now I can take pictures anywhere and upload them to the intarweb! Next step: celebrity stalking! woo

Now I need to update my css for this site to do some cool stuff to the mobile-post and mobile-photo classes, so that they are easily recognizable. Maybe put pink backgrounds on them or something.

Edit: So I moved my moblog. Previously, as noted before I set up a moblog at textamerica. It was a way to get my pictures from my cell phone to the internet, but nothing more. The layout sucked, there were things you just couldnt do with it. The templating, the link, the display area, the commenting, and the html could all not be edited. Even after joining the private google group [http://groups.google.com/group/textamerica] to figure out some technical issues, I still couldn't find a way to simply format the page, images and comments. Maybe I just was used to the blogger.com style interface and non-WYSIWYG page editing interface.

Anyway, I had a "test" blog over at http://marthaler.blogspot.com for testing formatting and other stuff to publish into this blog. well, it is now my moblog (albeit, I am still working on the css over there). So to see the previously uploaded images, check that out. Its a more personal 'snapshot' (pun intended) into my life. :)

gmail chat

2006-02-17T22:10:00.000-08:00

So tonight, i used the gmail chat interface for the first time. my first impression is that, AJAX is going to change the way that people use thier desktops.

first off, since I had emailed my ~~enemy~~ friend tommy recently, he showed up in my gmail 'Quick Contacts' menu with a little orange dot next to it. Not knowing what the orange dot meant, but it being different than the typical grey dots next to all the other @gmail accounts in my Quick Contact list, I decided to mash the mouse button onto it.

9:29 PM me: are you looking for love?

And so on and so forth, until we talked for 20 minutes about the badness that is the <iframe> that the chat originally shows up in, to the fact that you can "pop" the iframe out into its own browser window (if you have your pop-up blocker disabled!), and continue to have a chat with the person to the fact that video games are the new golf. What was so nice about it (me being the minimalist that I am): the only thing in the new chat browser window is the chat and an input box.

The reason that I stopped using ICQ (7 digits bitchez) and later AIM (associated with an @arizona.edu email *cry*), is the fact that they try to make money off thier IM clients by putting animated gifs** on the top of thier clients. Well, this chat didnt have any of that annoyance.

In fact, it didn't even have any of the emoticons that used to dominate the Yahoo Messenger(cm) days. I remember days of IM'ing my friend Turtle (who never comments on blogs) wasting it away just doing all day long, instead of actually talking to one another. Well, although emoticons are still present in gmail chat, they seem to be WAAAY LESS ANNOYING (and colorful); hopefully keeping the actual communication to a maximum.

Anyway, the chats are definetly stored, the same way that email conversations are stored. You can star them, search them, and definetly archive them. Unless, of course, either party selects 'Off the record', one of two options at the bottom of the browser window. Pretty freakin handy, especially since sometimes you don't want the FTC knowing that you gave Gordon Gecko that insider stock tip about Google's stock going up.

9:57 PM me: afk, im going to blog about it

** OT: Did you know that when viewing an animated gif in Firefox 1.5 in a separate tag, it creates a thumbnail for that gif as the icon for that tab? Can you say sweet?!

Tailgates

2006-01-31T16:04:00.000-08:00

So, The University of Arizona basketball team is coming to Los Angeles this weekend to play USC and UCLA. Its been a tradition of our little AZ clique to go to the games for the last 5 years. However, UofA was a pretty good basketball team the majority of those years. Now with Rodgers gone, out of the top 25 rankings for the first time in 7-8 years, and Lute giving the kibosh on 3 point attempts (he should just tell Radenovich to stop shooting) things are swinging back into the LA team's favor.

Which brings me to the issue of tailgates. It would be nice to actually have a truck to go to the basketball games and put the tailgate down and sit and have a few beers and kick back. Well, I used to be able to do that.

Alas, as bad luck would have it (with the help of a few boys from a local chop shop ) my tailgate on my pickup truck was stolen clean. In the place where I park my truck at night. I mean, I see CLKs, H2s, m3's and all sort of $$$ MB cars next to mine. And they have to go and take off my tailgate. Taken right off. Who does that?

I had a nice long chat with the Manhattan Beach police man while he took down the crime scene information and dusted the bed and back lights for prints. It turns out that not too many tailgates get stolen. I've never heard about it until now, and it just sucks when it happens to you. And by the passive you, I mean me.

<livejournal> Mood: depressed </livejournal>

No Tsunami, but No Beach Either

2005-12-23T12:17:00.000-08:00

So, last wednsday it really was like the movie. Some were saying that the peak on Wednsday was the biggest waves to hit the Los Angeles region since El Nino.

My roomate snapped this picture from our house on 8th Street:

They closed down Manhattan Beah Pier, but still checked it out from the strand (a safe distance up!).

The whitewater on those waves were 10+ft high. Needless to say, noone was paddling out. And supposedly the LA County Lifeguards saved some woman that got swept away while standing on the bike path north of El Porto before closing off every beach in the SouthBay.

And as you can see in the next picture there was lots and lots of erosion. Almost no sand is left on the beach halfway to the volleyball courts. LA county continues to import sand at a rate of 9 million tons per year (*) and the washing away of sand from this storm alone is going to cost lots and lots of taxpayer $$!

And my brother says that San Diego was firing more than the South Bay! Although at least one person died down in carlsbad.

Big Wednsday

2005-12-17T14:00:00.000-08:00

Is there going to be a tsunami in Los Angeles? The swell model at Wetsand dictates a HUGE southwest push is coming next week.

Which means that they are forecasting 38 foot waves. To those people not familiar with wave sizes, these waves are measured Hawaiian style from thier backs. That means the 38 foot waves next Wednsday will have 70+foot faces! Get the jetskis ready!

For those who have not seen the movie Big Wednsday about the Malibu surfers in the 1960's (whose huge waves are shot in Waimea Bay, not in Malibu) it is an epic struggle of friendship throughout the years where the huge surf brings them all together. (It has Gary Busey for chrissake!) Will this be the year where they could have actually filmed the movie here in LA where it was set?! I think it might be... albeit up the coast a few miles from Malibu.

When the tsunami hits LA next Wednsday, thankfully one of my crazy friends has agreed that we can 'hide out' in his cabin up in Mammoth Mountain. If the tsunami gets all the way up there, then Katrina will seem like a joke. I'll bring my snowboard just in case there is snow. ;)

Edit: Uploaded photos to the blogger.com service instead of referencing my usc student computing facility page

itunes versus winamp

2005-11-09T10:59:00.000-08:00

this is an official blog now, I am going to write something about owning an ipod and using itunes. :D (next i discuss the war in iraq!!)

so, i recently purchased an ipod nano a few weeks back (mainly for my planned trip to hawai'i). of course, i ordered it directly from apple.com: it seems that you can get it engraved for no extra cost. if anyone ever finds a black nano on the streets of LA with the initials 'tm' carved on the back (i didn't know what else to put!) then be sure to contact me, and i will give you $10 for it (seems fair to me). Also, due to the huge fuss about the ipod nano's scratching, i haven't seen it. that could be because i cut the plastic protector thing the nano came with to fit the screen and left it on there, but im also careful not to put my nano in my knife sack (i ruined some good books that way, need to get rid of some knives i guess).

which comes to the nature of this post: itunes. i dont like it. in fact, i've been using winamp (i luse windows) since 1999 when i first got my first song off of napster (what was your first song? mine was kurupt-who ride wit us). so i tried to switch to itunes. it is the windows version of it, and maybe it is different on OSX, but the interface just doesnt make sense to me.

i was never a 'playlist' guy. I just opened up winamp with my collection by importing a folder into winamp and then playing what was avaliable. i could hit 'j' and 'oasis' and scroll up and down to get my fill of british altern-rock. keyboard shortcuts to stop, skip, fade and pause songs. everything makde sense. i even upgraded from 2.92 to 5.11 like a year ago (in fact, my favorite winamp plugin needed version 5.+) with no issues what so ever: they kept backward compatibility.

So, i start using itunes to organize my music collection (i start to realize that my music collections IDv2/IDv3 tags are horribly unorganized; the cd ripper software ive used over the years must not have done a very good job of using cddb.com. so i start organizing my collection, updating the idv3 tags through itunes (which is a horrendous pain: in winamp i can just alt+3 and edit every field directly (can't do multiple files though)). And I started visiting http://www.last.fm and http://www.amazon.com and downloading sample album art to be displayed with the mpeg4 .m4a converted tracks played on my ipod (or were selected in itunes). that was the coolest feature that i saw in itunes: being able to associate pictures with tracks and have them show up when played (i am easily amused).

so, do i give up winamp? i was still using it to play my muzak while writing code or taking a shower (love those logitech speakers). i didn't want to, but i started having to because i kept updating my music through itunes and porting my music into my ipod. well, then i discovered ml ipod a winamp plugin. it is pretty sweet, capable of doing almost everything that i was using itunes for, and glitch free. just downloaded it, installed it and fired up winamp and viola! my ipod shows up in the Devices listed in the Media Library (which is a new thing in Winamp 5+). now i can update all the songs on my ipod until my heart is content. HOWEVER! no more pretty pictures for me. :(

Currently, there is no way to associate a gif/jpg/png file with the music track to be uploaded to the ipod. which sucks, but it is a small price to pay to get back to my winamp roots. and supposedly, when the developer(s) figure(s) out a way to store consistent meta-data about tracks and also use (and/or update) the mp4.dll converter, then im sure that they will have pictures up and running on ipods very soon now. which makes me happi(er).

who said "it never rains in la"? they were wrong.

Formatting

2005-10-30T18:03:00.000-08:00

If you want better formatting of this BLOG, use your favorite RSS feed reader and set up the display however you want it.

Its like lots of people these days can't understand the difference between content and presentation of said content.

Which is why I love the ytmnd.com website. Its ALL content.

hands of steel

2005-09-30T12:18:00.000-07:00

so back in the day, i used to read some kung-fu magazines. i was a green belt in the country club's taek-won-do club, at 12 we were badass. anyways, in the back of the king-fu magazines, they used to advertise these little gadgets that were supposedly used for improving your finger strength by exercising them in ways traditional methods couldn't match for that supposed 'kung fu grip'. I never got one of those doo-hickey's, instead I had to rely on a plastic&metal combination wrist grip thing that I used religiously from when I was 12 to 15. [Which totally affected my awesome Nintendo skillz, but that is unrelated to the topic.]

Fast forward to 1999. There is a bus, and one of my older brothers is leaving to join the Navy after graduating college. This is the start of the clothes ripping when every guy on the double decker bus is shirtless and covered in beer.

Fast forward again to 2002. A friend of a friend's 27th birthday, got a bus to Santa Monica from the South Bay. My brother, the same one who went into the Navy, is visiting and there is a keg on this bus, but it is not an open aired double decker bus. Too bad, the shirts rip and beer is everywhere again. It looked like it was raining outside, except there was no rain; it was beer on the inside. When A was cleaning up the beer when we got back with Turtle's nice unripped shirt (which he voluntarily took off and threw on the groud) he was plenty pissed. That's all I rememeber about that.

Needless to say, these events (along with others that I either can't remember or just forget) have founded the basis of an uncurable need to throw water or dump beer on people and/or rip thier shirts off with the kung-fu grip developed as a child. That is why, elar and little jeffrey, the pants came off outside shellback's. And also, jfulk why the shirt came off and the tie got thrown on the roof.

It is the traditions that makes events like these worthwhile and exciting (and talked about). Hopefully, as we get older we will calm down...

Below the Hard Deck

2005-09-08T11:33:00.000-07:00

So this weekend on Saturday, I will be playing in the Annual Top Gun Volleyball Tournament down in Neuport Beach (is it 'Neuport' or 'Newport'? does it matter?). I know that shennanigan's will ensue, either at the tourney or at the "Officer's Party" afterwards.

I'll update this post this weekend with the outcome, <bad top gun pun>hopefully the pattern won't be full and there will be points for second place.</bad topgun pun>

Update: Our team, 'Trough Gun' went 0-4. The level of competition has escalated in the past years; the Maverick division 6-man teams (of which we were 1 of 14) had various levels of sportsmanship (i.e. inverse ratio of drinking ability to seriousness) and teamwork (i.e. multiple blockers, short sets, outsite calls, back sets, and various other indoor club team abilities). Our team, wrapped only in our towels (with our dog tags!) and talking about the hard-deck on our gym bench (from ikea) did hit the booze early, and retired to the showers before the playoffs because of the four of us, only two played college volleyball. I guess you needed all six. The rally scoring to 17 wasn't helping either: games lasted about 8 minutes each.

Highlights tho when we threw our dogtags into the ocean to remind ourselves about our fallen comrades, and how things could have been different if we weren't projected into a flat spin on takeoff.

The surf was good though even with the sticky redtide.

coincidences

2005-08-15T11:29:00.000-07:00

Note: this post was delayed posting a few days for no reason other than the fact that i forgot to publish it.

so i think that i experienced the most coincidental set of events in a single weekend ever last weekend when a friend and i road-tripped up through new mexico and into the durango/silverton region of colorado.

1/ cross canadian ragweed; c created a mix cd for me two months ago with one of thier songs on it; i was listening to that exact song on the way to pick up c driving to durango; we just happened to pick a restaurant (Ore House) Friday night in durango for which we have to wait 30 minutes. While waiting, the place right next to it has Cross Canadian Ragweed playing for 20 bucks. Its rock-country, the kind of stuff that they play on country stations. The dude reminds me of Skynard, and the show was extremely good except for the oklahoma people in the crowd.

2/ Jeep tour. My phone number is the same as thiers. The only difference is the area code. Duu duu duuuuh.

3/ Mesa Verde: Nothing coincidental. Hiking was fun and ruins. Petroglyphs were amazing and well worth the three mile hike (as no strollers or canes could make it up some of the sandrock stairs carved into the cliff you had to trek).

4/ Lost Dog. Nothing there, except for a $15 100% agave tequila shot that tasted like turpentine.

5/ Rafting down the Animas river with the same company as the jeep tour. Nothing special unless you count the fact that the guide told me i could jump in to swim/wade during a wide shallow part and its pretty deep. i do a graceful launching flail dive off the prow of the raft and land in 3 feet of 45 degree water (Farenheit). if it wasnt for my ninja like reflexes and whale like blubber around my midrif, i would've broken my neck or gotten hypothermia.

6/ Van ride to Silverton from Durango. C went to a small catholic high school in the ABQ. it turns out that the now local snowburnout driver went to the same high school and graduated 2 years after she did. they talked and tried to figure out mutual people and it turns out that some guy who the driver played water polo with in HS (who we met at shellbacks one night from CS Northridge) taped the guy upside down from a tree when he was a freshman. "dick." was what he said about him.

7/ There is no coincidence in Silverton. There is almost nothing there. The only cool thing is that there used to be underground tunnels from the nicer hotels to the brothels so that wives couldn't see thier husbands partake in thier local whores. Although, when it started raining I left my sunglasses on the bar and we ran to the train station. When I couldnt even remember the name of the bar, I had to mathematically deduce the name from its memorized location and a brochure hotel listing. I spoke with the manager of the lost and found, gave them my cali address, so hopefully I won't lose those sunglasses again.(1)

(1): they did send the sunglasses with a note "if you want to pay for postage, you can send some money to the return address on this box." maybe open up the brothel tunnels and i will.

personal information search

2005-08-10T10:59:00.000-07:00

i know everyone has heard that cnet wrote an article about google's ceo and included some basic personal information in thier article about privacy and intraweb crawlers obtaining 'private' information published on teh intarnets. well, it turns out that while 'marthaler' isn't that common of a name (there should be in about 30 years after me and my 4 brothers have 5 boys each...) you still can't find too much information about me on the web. it turns out that there is some powerful ceo/business guy in chicago with the same first and last name as me. and that there is a whole wisconsin/minnesota marthaler family. the only way that you can even see how i have impacted the documented world is by searching for 'physics' along with my name. and then you only get an article about how i won an engineering competition back in the day.

Well, it turns out that there are better ways of obtaining personal/address/phone number/martial (and marital!)/age information about someone. in fact, when i looked myself up using zabasearch.com i found that they had every phone number i have ever listed/paid for and every address at which i have ever lived. then when i looked you up (i can tell who you are, i have people) i found everything about you too!! I'll call ya later.

p.s. caps are for people that have shift keys

new phone, moblog/photoblog, and textamerica.com

2005-08-09T10:10:00.000-07:00

So i recently upgraded my mobile from a small Samsung phone to a thin flip form-factor Motorola Razor model. This is only the third ever phone model that I've had, starting with the smallish Nokia back in 2001. I forget the samsung and nokia model numbers... maybe ill look them up. Nah.

My first Nokia was awesome. The software interface was very intuitive and kept track of everything in a very proper and sensical manner. Up/Down buttons accessed what I wanted things to access and menus were easy to navigate and things just worked(unless I didn't know better, and just assumed that was the way things worked for all phones). I bought the Samsung because it was the only phone that Cingular was offering in 2003 that was a non-clamshell small enough to be comparable to my nokia. It wasn't so good.

There was an LED on the phone that would blink. All. The. Time.(1) Granted, you could change the color that it would blink from blue to orange and back to blue, but still, it was annoying sleeping with a bright blue blinking LCD in the corner of your room. And to make matters worse, the software interface was bad. Up/Down buttons didnt work right, the phone didnt split dialed/received/incoming-but-not-picked-up calls. Nor did the phone save outgoing text messages (which means I had no record of drunk messaging you that one time!(2)). And text messaging was a chore: there was no auto-complete feature, and no fast and easy way to enter two consecutive letters from the same key. I wasn't happy, but I coped.

Now I got this RAZR phone. It is kinda funny. The interface is customizable, but in a way that I can't get it to do *exactly* what I want. Just kinda close to what I want. The motorola UI is good though, colors are skinnable and the menu items and address book are in 'proper order' and make some sense. I've never really had a camera phone before, and it only takes low resolution images 480x600 jpegs. I was hoping for larger images, that are clearer when viewed on something other than a phone.

The picture quality really start to bother me when I tried to set up a moblog. MoBlog, I assume, stands for mobile blog or photoblog but i dont know how photo condensed down to 'mo'. It is an automated service to publish the photos that you take on your phone onto the intrarweb. And, like all good things, it is free. The one that I set up, http://tmarthal.textamerica.com needs a bit of CSS customization (and flaming gifs), but it is handy when I take a picture of where I live and want to share it with other people.

I think that blogger.com offers the same sort of photo upload service (like you can send your pictures to an email address to upload them) but I'll stick with textamerica well, just because.

(1) The unorthodox internet writer sh0uld never use writing techniques overzealously. This period stopping emphasis, while neccessary, should not be tried by the average blogger.
(2) Which means that it never happened.

marking evolution and intelligent design

2005-08-03T13:00:00.000-07:00

In late July, BBC published an article about the process from which one species of butterfly can divert from another. The article's main point is that two very-similar species of butterflies living in the same geographic area only mate with others of the same species based off of a small mutation which produced marks only distinguishable to butterflies of the same species.

"This has the effect of discouraging inter-species mating, thus encouraging genetic isolation and species divergence."

Which has always been one of the aspects of evolution that I always found difficult: how could one individual mutate/evolve and then pass its modified genetic information onto its predecessors? How would its predecessors know to only mate with other evolved species? This article and study is very insightful in shedding light into that, and could be (speculation) the divergence between how fish became snakes became lizards became ????.

Of course, I found that article from /. when it was posted a few weeks ago. Of course, with the typical slashdot discussion, people started talking about the news and events of today rather than staying on the topic of the article, and while President Bush hadn't yet spoke out that Intelligent Design should be taught in biology class, the discussion drifted over to Creationism's successor.

I don't want to ruin some of the discussion for people, but there seem to be a very intelligent minority over there, and one or two people often provide more succinct information in a paragraph or two about a topic than a media reported can with 5 pages of text. This post brings up ID, and amongst others, this post provides the clearest counter point about multi-animal 'intelligent design' done by the same 'author'.

<LFP/>

Rap Marketing Comes to Nerdcore

2005-07-28T22:48:00.000-07:00

My friend jake sent me this. jake fancies himself as "j2bb" in his inner ibm web development rap circles.

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,67970,00.html

It talks about how CS grad students around the nation (with whom i group myself) are creating verses about thier math and thier phat 'Algorythms'.

"MC Plus+ rattles off lines like: "I'm encrypting shit like every single day; sending it across a network in a safe way; protecting messages to make my pay; if you hack me you're guilty under DMCA.""

for once i am speachless. too close to home? you're god damned right.

professional web publishing: love that tag!
2005-07-23T20:38:00.000-07:00
LETS SEE JUST HOW FAST THIS BITCH CAN GO
OMG LIKE HI LOL ROFL

last.fm::audioscrobbler::what im listening to::what others are listening to

2005-07-23T20:01:00.000-07:00
while others post static content about what they are listening to, i choose to use a tool to keep all my raving fans complacent with auto-updates to my winamp awesome list using a tool called audioscrobbler:

http://www.audioscrobbler.com/user/tmarthal/

The thing that i like about audioscrobbler is the last.fm technology. it is like a combination of launch.yahoo.com with shoutcast. although, i dont completely understand it (see my comments in that other blog post about using technology that i dont 100% understand!), it is bad-to-the-ass.

to listen to the songs that i am listening to, and only me, then open up my last.fm profile http://www.last.fm/user/tmarthal/ and click on the "personal radio button" and it will start a script to download a .m3u playlist file (that you can import into winamp) and then get streaming music delivered to your computer that I PICKED ... by listening to them myself!! Note that there is a way to pick songs and whole albums from a webinterface, but that is dumb and not along the lines of "listen to this because it is awesome".

i think that there might be some sort of trial period for publishing my radio station, my firefox plugins change and delete so much html content from browsed websites that i am not sure that i am viewing what you other people are viewing. we'll see if they ever shut it off.

¨

blogspot.com and google indexing

2005-07-22T09:10:00.000-07:00
So there is this Blogger.com 'blogger' SearchBar and blog webring bar at the top of this page. I could have chosen to get rid of it using a simple CSS hack, but I chose not to, thinking that it would actually work, and that the average user could search this page.

Well they can't. At least not yet.

Cause google hasn't indexed this blog yet. For instance, using the google search "AWESOME site:tmarthal.blogspot.com" returns 0 results, when it should return 100 million. So while we wait patiently for the google robot to spyder these pages, we have to be content in the fact that they will eventually get here, and the SearchBar will eventually work.

Importing Old Items

2005-07-21T16:43:00.000-07:00
I have finally imported my old items from my previous blog and updated the blogger.com interface to get the exact format that I wanted... it had to simulate the '1996' html so reminiscent of my early college page posting, but still use a web interface tool(deward says: "Welcome to 2005"). It is nice that blogger/blogspot gives us (intraweb progamamarts) the tools to hack at the published website html itself instead of relying on a limited amount of css templates designed by others (as seems to be the case at bloglines.com). I guess I have a problem using technology that I don't understand that was written by other people.

Now the only problem with this thing is posting content that is worthy of the name: i am finding that i hardly ever care about the opinions and happenings of other random people, so why should they care about mine? In fact, I was going to blog about how I try never to use any automation or tool that I do not understand in my scripting and programming (which is inherently what blogger.com does), but then realized that was not only not the case, but that i couldn't decipher my thoughts enough on the subject to make a coherent argument why people should not use tools that they didnt write themselves or understand enough to customize with the features that they want. I guess i was just going to take a cheap stab at non-technical people using the internets the same way that I do.

After that tech post, I was going to blog about how I stopped buying 'adult vitamins' that i would never take. I now bought some Flinstone's vitamins instead that I take everyday (since they are chewable and what color i get determines the type of day I will have). My point being that taking a not-as-good-for-you vitamin everyday is better than never taking a the-best-ever vitamin. That was Zen, this is Dao.

Update

2005-07-06T12:00:00.000-07:00
So, I had this index.html file all re-formatted and had updated some of teh syntax and spelling of the posts (and clarified the facebook one) way back when but did some more work on it before I uploaded it tonight. I still need to do soo much; it takes lots of time to get things exactly right. And I usually either do real stuff or idle on technological websites trying to stay on the bleeding edge when i have some spare time away from 'work'.

Needless, after reading my friend enemy thaine's blog I needed a nice break from trying to understand the fine intracacies of using blue ink over black and cursive over block lettering when submitting applications to archaic business like schools that knowing Precious created a pretty darn sweet blog was a breathe of fresh air.

p.s. run on sentences that make no sense are bad for comprehension. i hope you get the gist.

port-au-hell

2005-06-10T12:00:00.000-07:00
damn you ports 21/22, you suck ass. =( i cant upgrade this page with totally sweet updates because the intraweb service that the hotel uses does not let puTTy connect to aludra.usc.edu on any port. Update: The more that I research the problem, the more that I think it is an @usc domain issue where they are using a Nazi .htaccess file in thier Apache configuration. I guess usc isd sysadmins dont want Hungarian crackers using a proxy in the ABQ to access thier domain: use an Adelphia drone in the LA area instead. I'll open a ticket with them on the morrow.

what the kids are up to

2005-05-10T13:00:00.000-07:00
http://www.exbyte.net/media/videos/906/Hardcore_dancing.html

You should watch that. Since I am breathless from trying it myself, a diamond in the rough friend had this to say about it:

"MOSHING IS NOT PUSHING PEOPLE AROUND AND LAUGHING LIKE AN EMO FAGGOT

THAT VIDEO IS MOSHING

THE DANCE IS VIOLENT AND PASSIONATE, AND IF YOU GET JACKED IN THE FACE THATS LIFE, IF YOU DONT LIKE GO HUG A WALL

AT GOOD HARDCORE SHOWS WHERE PEOPLE ARENT MORONS THE OBJECT IS NOT TO HURT OTHER PEOPLE, NOTICE HOW PEOPLE ARE SPACED OUT

ALSO ITS TOUGH TO DO IT FOR LONGER THAN 30 SECONDS AT TIME, ITS EXHAUSTING

THAT IS ALL"

And that is all.

Frustrated Database

2005-04-27T13:00:00.000-07:00
Someone make an XQuery (namespace) IDE plugin for Eclipse. Shit, google just provided one...
Update: I just realized how horrible the XQuery specification is implemented in any sort of off-the-shelf packages. We used QuiP (Note the use of caP1+Als) for a CSCI 585:Databases homework assignment. It sucked, especially since the syntax we learned in class and documented in the notes was the 04 APR 2005 Specification while on the QuiP site they have this gem:

"The latest XQuery draft was released in May 2003 and though there have been no substantial changes, the syntax supported by the current QuiP implementation must be considered out of date."

Pretty sweet when you're writing software and have to figure out the syntax by trial-and-error.

High Maintenance Filter

2005-04-24T14:00:00.000-07:00
"ALL RIGHT LISTNE TO ME. YOU PULL UP WHERE SHE IS, RIGHT. YOU GET OUT OF THE CAR AND LOCK BOTH DOORS. THEN GET OUT OF THE CAR AND YOU WALK OVER TO HER AND BRING HER BCAK TO THE CAR.

TAKE OUT THE KEY OPEN THE DOOR FOR HER AND YOU LET HER GET IN AND THEN CLOSE THE DOOR FOR HER. YOU WALK AROUND THE BACK OF THE CAR AND YOU LOOK THROUGH THE REAR WINDOW. IF SHE DOESNT REACH OVER AND LIFT UP THAT BUTTON SO YOU CAN GET IN,

YOU DUMP HER, YOU DUMP HER FAST."

"just like that?"

"LISTEN TO ME KID, IF SHE DOSENT REACH OVER AND LIFT UP THAT BUTTON SO YOU CAN GET IN, THAT MEANS SHE IS A SELFISH BROAD AND ALL YOURE SEEING IS JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG. YOU DUMP HER, AND YOU DUMP HER FAST."

when 'no' means 'yes'

2005-04-24T13:00:00.000-07:00
For those in the know, XCD skin products are like god's gift to aging guys that still want to hit on college girls. Thier 'defender' product has an SPF 15 rating, which means most of the time I dont have to put sunscreen on my face. Thier eye cream stuff supposedly smooths wrinkles and reduces the little puffiness that occurs around the eyes. Pretty crazy stuff.

reading is FUNdamental

2005-04-22T13:00:00.000-07:00
I just finished the Schismatrix by Bruce Sterling. I also purchased the movie The Sword of Doom at Fry's Electronics last week, and it is awesome. I also read Perry Bible Fellowship (because it is awesome). I need more animated gifs on this site. I'm thinking maybe some dragons spitting flames.

...and even you can find love...

school emails!=sucks

2005-04-22T12:01:00.000-07:00
Also, i have signed up for facebook (note that its www.THEfacebook.com, it seems that www.facebook.com is a link-spamming-search-engine-page-ranker) and since it seems that you can only sign up for the facebook social network if you have a valid .edu email address, everyone i know that will read this probably wont be able to sign up, since we are old dirty men. also, i dont know what its for. if you know, and you know how to get my email address (hint: its not hard [hint2: its my username @ usc.edu]) then email me. also, i am part of 'the cool club' and 'team tom'. i wanted to get into the group 'we wear our collars down', but they wouldnt let me cause that one time i was listening to puffy and had to pop my colla. holla.

school=sucks

2005-04-22T12:00:00.000-07:00
Finals are next week. I can't comment on the shitty nature of my classes else the school might take down this awesome blog.

P.S. elarson says that my blog is awesome

.plan

2005-04-20T23:00:00.000-07:00
Gonna write a sweet xml, xsl and css page soon without any commercial packages or any other WYSIWYG crap. <gangsign>straight html hacking 4 lyfe</gangsign>

k

p.s. unclosed tags and unvalidated html rule

Fresh without the Re:

2005-04-20T12:00:00.000-07:00

That was what happened the first time that I visited my friend dewards blog. I totally crashed it with my F5 DoS attack.

Hello World

2005-04-19T22:06:00.000-07:00
this is where i will soon post super sweet things

COULD THIS BE ANY EASIER TO INSTALL
I have plans to add sweet c o l o r s and sweet pictures .

General | No Comments »
m

tmarthal will be televised

2005-04-18T22:00:00.000-07:00
The first order of business is to transpose the contents of my previous blog, located on the USC student web servers here http://www-scf.usc.edu/~marthale/index.html to this blogger.com service. Hopefully I can fiddle with the css formatting to make it somewhat match my old blog.

It was too much of a hassle dealing with the Information Services Division at USC to try and post dynamic html content on thier servers.