jastram.de Blog - Science

The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 14:54:35 -0400

Not exactly new (the Challenge has been running since 1964), but still interesting: The James Randi Educational Foundation challenges people with paranormal capabilities to present them in laboratory conditions. So far, never claimed the money. Next time somebody claims to get a headache from cell phone radiation, recommend that person to apply.

Black hole at the center of the milky way

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:37:08 -0500

Not surprising, but very cool.

Stunning pictures of the sun

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:58:15 -0400

Enjoy!

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Synaptics Touchpad & USB Mouse at the same time

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:57:42 -0400

While Touchpad and USB Mouse worked out of the box on my T61 running Ubuntu 8.04, I prefer the synaptics touchpad driver. Installing it was a breeze, but it stopped my USB Mouse from working.

While there are a lot of fixes are on the internet, it took me a while to get it to work, mainly because my Kernel was too new. Most fixes suggest to use the "AlwaysCore" Option in the "ServerLayout" section. Eventually I found this link which suggests to use "SendCoreEvents" instead. Now my xorg.conf looks like this:

Section "ServerLayout"
    ...
    InputDevice    "Touchpad0" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "SendCoreEvents"
EndSection
...
Section "InputDevice"
    ...
    Option         "SendCoreEvents" "true"
EndSection
...
Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier      "Touchpad0"
    Driver          "synaptics"
    Option          "CorePointer"
    Option          "SendCoreEvents" "true"
    ...
EndSection

Deploy Industry Interest Group now available

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:14:15 -0400

I am currently performing research for the 4-year Deploy EU Project that focuses on formal methods in systems engineering. Any commercial entities may participate in various ways.

Under construction...

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:56:52 -0400

Ich bin am umstrukturieren, daher sind in Moment ein paar Links kaputt. Das wird in den nächsten Tagen in Ordnung gebracht.

Generate your own QR-Code

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 14:09:43 -0500

When I was in Japan, I loved the fact that there were QR-Codes all over the place - QR-Codes are two-dimensional bar codes that can be "scanned" (i.e. photographed) with any cell phone with camera. The camera would then decode the QR-Code and visit a URL, call a phone number, etc.

There are QR-Generators online, and the code shown here is for jastram.de. I found this on PDA Geek.

Citizendium as an alternative to Wikipedia?

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 22:32:31 -0400

Are you worried about rogue content in Wikipedia? Citizendium will try to be an alternative. Or will it just be an elite Wikipedia...?

Ubuntu: Problem with international Keyboard Layouts

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Fri, 26 May 2006 15:53:25 -0400

I was very close to dumping Ubuntu. This has so far been the best Desktop Linux distribution I ever worked with, and I really liked the ease of use. But one day, something broke. It didn't allow me to switch between keyboard layouts any more! As I often have to compose texts in German, this is a big deal, and quite a problem. I was exploring the various forums for months! I found quite a few people who had the same problem, but nobody with a solution that actually worked for me.

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Installing X.org on Ubuntu

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 19:42:21 -0500

Time for checking out a new distribution - there has been a lot of noise about Ubuntu, so I gave it a try. So far I like it a lot - it is Gnome-based (vs. my KDE-based Suse 9.2 system), and Gnome definitely got much better! Many of my favorite tools (Gimp, Eclipse, Firefox) are Gnome-based, so I like the idea of running them in their native environment.

As I use the system on my IBM Thinkpad R52, I ran into the same problem I ran with Suse: The 1400x1050 screen could not be driven out of the box, and in order to fix this (as I already found out for Suse), I had to recompile X. Here are my notes on doing that.
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Bushido - the Soul of Japan (Book Review)

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 17:07:51 -0400

Almost two weeks ago, I suddenly ran out of reading material in Japan, and I knew that I had long train and bus rides ahead of me. What better reason to pick up one of the many famous books that cover the cultural background of Japan? I picked Bushido, written by Inazo Nitobe in 1905 (originally published in English, not a translation). Having already read another book from the same time (The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura in 1906), I had high hopes and wasn't disappointed.

Bushido is sometimes translated as "chivalry", but it's much more than that, it's an ethical system that transcents Japan to this day. Nitobe covers the Samurai code, the role of women, Suicide and many other fascinating topics.
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Sun & SOA

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 00:49:49 -0400

SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) pops up more and more often. Seems that Sun, after kicking its butt for not capitalizing more on Java, tries to respond better to SOA, as this Register Article explains.
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Applied Minds - Paradise for Geeks

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 23:21:57 -0400

Wired has an article about Applied Minds - a company I once visited (for my employer) and fell in love with. It's a place that pushes technology to the edge.
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Free and legal music

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 16:45:46 -0400

Would you like to extend your music collection, but are worried about doing something illegal? If so, head over to Tutle's Jukebox - a collection of MP3s containing music with expired copyright - all recorded from 78 RPM Vinyl! The music is now in the public domain and got recorded in the early 20th Century.

http://www.turtleserviceslimited.org/jukebox.htm

1400x1050 with Intel Mobile 915GM

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 22:22:52 -0400

As I posted previously, I got a new laptop and am in the process of setting it with Linux. Installing Linux is easy - to make it take full advantage of the existing hardware is tricky. My current challenge is to have the Graphics subsystem use the full 1400x1050 resolution of the screen. I will update this post as I go along to document my progress.
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