Ehsan Nourbakhsh’s Blog » fun

26 Channels, 26 Years

Ehsan — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 23:49:03 +0000

One of my lab-colleague friends Ryan created 15 images for our Ember Zigbee devices to run on all the channels up to 26. We jokingly attributed it to my 26^th birthday today, as well as an April 1^st joke. Anyways, I prefer to regard it as my birthday cake and its candles

Here is a screenshot of the Wi-Spy readings inside our Faraday cage.

Agreement Literature

Ehsan — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 23:46:01 +0000

You understand you have been reading agreements too much, when your answer to an e-mail from your “roommate-to-be” begins with:

I answer what you had asked in the same numbering order. But please note that I answer to the best of my knowledge and just to help you with estimates. Hence it is your own responsibility to verify anything, in case such answer is the basis for your decisions.

I was about to add “The responder holds himself not responsible in any way for any damage or misunderstanding caused by the answers provided”. But then felt this is too hostile for a new roommate!

BoingBoing on Drunk Astronauts

Ehsan — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 23:19:42 +0000

My favorite website, BoingBoing, has made a big mistake by naming Homer Simpson “Drunk Astronaut Pioneer”. That is a big mistake, since the pioneer of them all is nobody except Captain Archibald Haddock.

In the Explorers on the Moon (On a marché sur la Lune) book of series The Adventures of Tintin, Captain Haddock sneaks some bottles of Whisky and gets drunk in space. Since this book was published in 1954, there would be no doubt that Homer Simpson is not even in the game.

diggy night

Ehsan — Wed, 02 May 2007 03:52:18 +0000

I can’t resist writing it. Takes 5 minutes of my qualifier exam time, but is worth it.

A digg user posted an item about a HD-DVD code, and the fact it was taken down because of a takedown notice. Digg removed that. People noticed that and informed each other of Digg’s removing the dugg story. But Digg removed those too. People dugg all of this again, Digg un-dugged. People dugg, ….

The result? Look at this:

You think it is over? NO! The same is happening with Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDDVD_Night. People [write in] wiki, Wiki removes. People (write in) wiki, ….

bug or feature?

Ehsan — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 16:56:29 +0000

I just figured out that our web portal Galaxy, a uPortal in fact, and also our courseware WebCT both only use first eight characters of our passwords! This is interesting, since when choosing a password we are “forced” to use a password between 8 and 20, containing special characters and numbers.

Is it only me who thinks so, or is it kind of silly?

geek spam

Ehsan — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 20:33:42 +0000

Subject of a spam email I received:

VNC Qtparted iptables Monkey

How can they do it?

System development life cycle (sdlc)

ehsan — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 18:55:49 +0000

I have been very very busy in the past weeks. And seem to be very very busy in the future weeks as well. I’ve got a lot of things to do and deadlines to meet. When things are set, there will be a lot of things to write about.
Anyhow, somebody sent me a link to this advertisement which is worth sharing. I had seen the same cartoon before but everyday I believe more and more in its truth: