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Songs worth remembering

This is from a person who has got quite a few years under him. As the years pass and musical trends move from one thing to another, I notice what whenever certain songs are listened to... they are still very enjoyable. I won't go as far as calling certain songs timeless, but there are songs which really seem that way. For me, the songs evoke memories and emotions of particular times in this simple life of mine. They are treasured for that specific aspect. How about starting a song list recommendation? This thread can be the start of your favorite song list . The format can simply be “artist - song title”

Random Things

Some interesting discussion topics:

• FM Transmitters

• Instantiating an ActiveX component with wxPython

• Flash Memories Trend

Some good stuff to read:

• Hanging Out continues to grow in popularity among Teens
  
• Dan Gilmore: Fueling the Real Estate bubble

• Eric Sink's take on The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketting

If you have an hour or so to relax your mind

• Grid Game - Click on a circle, it turns a quarter turn. If its markings connect with a neighbors, then the neighbor turns.
  
  

Hurricane Wilma

Hurricane Wilma is about to be on top of us within hours. It is now 7:51am in Bradenton near Long Boat Key. The branches from large trees are having a field day as their arms wave wildly amidst the strong winds. The rain is moderate, not heavy.... but winds are picking up speed. The streets are filling up with water because I can see cars heavily splashing as they drive by. This will mean that the smallers streets will be quite flooded as their drainage systems are not that good. Wilma sure is taking her time because I have read that landfall was at 6 am in Naples.

There goes the trees again with their wild arms waving madly. If I didn't have a brain to be afraid, this would make for a pretty good comedy. My apartment gets a full window view of the storm. In my mind, I am imagining that these trees could easily be uprooted and fly right into the living room. There would be shattered glass flying in every direction. The blood image rolls around, but I dismiss it promptly.... too intense. It sure would make a spectacular action movie scene though.

Flash memories trend

The premise of this topic comes about as I am shopping for an MP3 player. With such array of choices in players, how can any consumer tell what makes one player trumph over another. Obviously the top of the heap is the iPod.... but that is out of my price range of trying to find a music player to accompany me to Gold's Gym. Even if you have decided on exactly what player you would like, it is even hard trying to decide between 128M, 256M, 512M, or 1G. The vast array of choices just boggle the mind.

The trend that is most obvious to everyone is that FLASH memories are finally coming down in price. This is the greatest factor that is finally making many portable devices available to average consumers. Devices such as 5Mbit pixel cameras, MP3 players, USB keys are finally at a range to compete against other things that don't cost quite as much: analog cameras, portable cd players, and floppy drives. But 5 years ago, I had the same question in my mind.... why are FLASH memories so expensive?

I have never worked in the semiconductor manufacturing industry so everything I say would only be a guess. Like everything in life, the answer must lie in supply and demand. Then that begs the question: Why is supply so low for FLASH because the demand is obviously there. Just as I am writing this, Sandisk (SNDK) stock has jumped over 22% on the announcement of their yearly profit. How wonderful for them to have been right smack in the center of this trend for all this time. How many of us have worked in an industry where the product are treated almost as valuable as gold?

If you have any thoughts to this topic, please contribute them here. This would provide you more space to elaborate.

Some Python Recipes

The recipe book at ActiveState has these recipes which look like they may be useful at one time or another:

* Pyro - python remote object invokation
* Python Recipe for reading Excel tabular data
* Python Recipe: only on change decorator
* Python Recipe: run once decorator
* Python Recipe: Communicate between processes using mmap

Lastly, there is a free .NET interoperability book:

* Free book: COM and .NET interoperability

technobabble

CSI Miami is pretty fancy when it shows off technology. There is usually a lot of flash in the show which makes it engaging for us commoners. It doesn't have the brilliance of the writing team for the original CSI; however, sometimes you do have to let your brain take a shit.

Recently I saw an episode where the investigator backtraces a webcam transmitting video wirelessly towards a receiving computer many states away. The CSI traces it to an IP address located in Georgia. Then the IP address rolls around on the screen like a fancy slot machine and comes up:

Aha... so the perpetrator is caught by the special technology. But there is something wrong here, can you guess? Message to hollywood: if you're going to wow us, try to do it right.

blurb on the flub: IP addresses are made up of a set of 4 hexadecimal numbers. Each hexadecimal number is in the range of 0-0xff (this translates to 0-255 decimal). The first number on that made-up IP address is entirely wrong.

Right Where It Belongs

  See the animal in it's cage that you built
  Are you sure what side you're on?
  Better not look him too closely in the eye
  Are you sure what side of the glass you are on?
  See the safety of the life you have built
  Everything where it belongs
  Feel the hollowness inside of your heart
  And it's all
  Right where it belongs
  
  [Chorus]
  What if everything around you
  Isn't quite as it seems?
  What if all the world you think you know
  Is an elaborate dream?
  And if you look at your reflection
  Is it all you wanted to be?
  What if you could look right through the cracks?
  Would you find yourself
  Find yourself afraid to see?
  
  What if all the world's inside of your head
  Just creations of your own?
  Your devils and your gods
  All the living and the dead
  And you really are alone
  You can live in this illusion
  You can choose to believe
  You keep looking but you can't find the woods
  While you're hiding in the trees 

by Nine Inch Nails

Was anyone ever an existentialist? Ages ago in my idealistic years at the university, I had many friends who were very much into Jean-Paul Sarte and Friedrich Nietzsche. The lyrics of this song lean a lot towards existentialism; don't you agree?