Ever wondered what eight year old girls did on the internet?

They visit sites like Stardoll and My Scene.

Now, you must be wandering what the hell is wrong with me and why I am telling you this. Well, let me explain. I was in New York for Thanksgiving break last week in my aunt's house and I was privileged to see her 8 year old child surf the internet and those were the two sites she went to. It had never crossed my mind what children (who aren't geeks) could do on the internet so I just thought it was interesting.

According to Wikipedia, Stardoll is created for people of all ages to 'dress-up' celebrities so I guess it's not only eight year old girls that visit the website. You know the cool thing about the internet, there's so much out there that you can't fathom exists and you keep on learning new stuff every day.

You can read the Wikipedia entry on MyScene here.

Wow: Henry not top three for World footballer of the year

Here.

This is even worse than what happened for the Ballon d'Or. I could understand the European awards as Cannavaro and Buffon had good domestic and international seasons. But of the three finalists: Cannavaro, Ronaldinho, and Zidane, I disagree with Ronaldinho's inclusion because he had a torrid world cup despite having a stellar domestic and european campaign.

These awards are just not consistent. Ronaldo won it in 2002 based on his performance at the World Cup scoring 8 goals in 7 games. Ronaldinho had a stinker at the world cup considering the hype he had going in yet he gets included.

Why do I care actually?

Facebook Firefox toolbar

From the Facebook blog, we hear that there's a new Facebook toolbar for Firefox 2.0. It's pretty addictive and it replicates a lot of the functionality of Facebook itself. You can also add Facebook as one of the search options in Firefox2.0 or IE7 from here. I recommend that you forgo the search option and use the toolbar if you are on Firefox. If you are using IE7, well, ...

From a developer's point of view, the toolbar was built using the Facebook developer platform and the source code is open source. You can see other open source projects built with the developer platform here. I wonder why they point out that it's open source. The source code for all extensions and themes that I use seem to be available to me although I haven't really looked into it. I guess it's the license under which the code is viewed that's different.

Cannavaro wins European footballer of the year

Once again, Henry was overlooked as Cannavaro was named the European footballer of the year. This was expected as there was already speculation that Henry was not going to win it. I feel sorry for him as he had another good year but I keep on wondering what he really has to do to win one of these awards. As Wenger said, he reached the Champions league final and the World cup final, losing one on penalty and losing the other in the last 10 minutes with 10 men. Well, that's life.

Congrats Cannavaro!!!

Quote of the day

I just visited by Google personalized homepage and do you know what the quote of the day was? It is There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it. You can find it here.

I have to agree with that although that has bitten me many times especially this semester so I am actually going to do everything I have to do to survive the last two weeks of the semester. As I told you earlier in the semester, if you don't see me in the next few days, you know what I should be doing.

Bolton v Arsenal

I don't feel like sleeping so I thought I might as well write this down.

For the second time in a few years, Bolton might have just knocked the final nail in the coffin that is our title hopes. I don't think we can win the title anymore especially with the way we are dropping points everywhere.

We were manhandled by Bolton who were up to their old tricks but I felt we coped better with them than in years past. As usual, we had our normal troubles of creating numerous chances and being unable to finish them. I doubt things would have been different if Henry, v.Persie, and Rosicky had played the game but we'll never know.

I finally saw Walcott play for the first time and I was impressed. It seemed Wenger might have made a mistake starting him in this particular game considering our history at the Reebok as he was pushed around from time to time but I think he held his own and had a very good game. The future is bright for this kid as everyone has been saying. And he really knows how to cross the ball. If only we had someone who could finish those chances....

Anelka had a really good game punishing his old team. The first was a blinder and the second seemed a tad offside. I thought there was a foul leading to the buildup of his first goal. Can someone explain how Kevin Davies didn't get a red card for his push on Eboue?

Back to Anelka... The two goals he scored today were his first in Bolton colors. My question: why did he wait till today? Because he had extra incentive playing his old team. If you look at the Arsenal squad, we don't have many people who can have that kind of fire in them when playing against their former clubs. The only people that come to mind are Gallas against Chelski, and maybe Baptista against Real. Fabregas against Barcelona doesn't count. Wenger needs to remedy this situation and maybe start buying from our rivals. It weakens them, strengthens us, and gives the players extra incentive when playing these clubs. If you look around the premiership, there are too many former Arsenal players plying their trade at other clubs.

What happened to Diouf?
I saw him today and he showed a glimpse of his old skills which he used to dazzle the world and what prompted Liverpool to sign him but he's no more the player he used to be. He won the African Footballer of the year award in 2001 and 2002 but I don't think he's even been in contention the last three years when Eto'o won it. Now Eto'o and Drogba are the frontrunners for the award this year while he languishes in Bolton. But since they (Bolton) are third in the premiership, he may not be doing bad for himself.

I think there were too many changes to the side from last year to this year as we lost Pires, Campbell, Bergkamp, Cole although everyone claims they didn't have major roles in the side. Well, I disagree. This year has been another learning experience because a lot of things changed between last year and this year and the team has had to adapt again. Well, now that the nucleus of the team seems to be set in Fabregas, Henry, Rosicky, Toure, Gallas, and v.Persie, Wenger shouldn't make too many changes in the side and let them grow, gel, get used to playing with each other, become more clinical, learn how to win games at the Emirates when teams don't come to play football, and make Baptista useful to deal with situations like the Reebok. (Why didn't Baptista start yesterday?).

This team looks like the kind of team that can win a cup so I have not lost hope in any of the three cups: Champions league, FA cup, and Carling cup (if we take it serious).

Good night.

Writer's block

I hate writer's block. I was writing an essay and I got stumped. I know what I want to say, I know what I want to emphasize. I have already written so much and what is remaining is the end part. And I can't seem to figure out how to put it down into words. It's so frustrating. I took time off to go and read other things to see if it would help. It didn't. Was that the wrong thing to do?

I need to finish this (not this one, the one I have writer's block on) essay. Don't tell me I will have to come back to it.

While we are still on the topic of writer's block, I have a few posts in draft mode in different states of being written that I have been planning to write and either due to writer's block or pure laziness, I have been unable to go back and finish them. It has always seemed easier to start something new than to go back and finish them.

I am promising myself that I will either finish all the posts in draft mode by the end of the year or delete them as having lost their significance. I don't like making promises here. The last one I made I didn't keep because I forgot and I have been procrastinating to tell you that I forgot. Well, I am going to do that now.

I promised (here and here) to express myself on the 10 different themes featured on the Yahoo Time Capsule but I forgot. The weird thing is that I reminded you both times that the clock was ticking but I was found wanting when the time came to deliver. Since I realized that I forgot, I have been contemplating whether I should still express myself in the 10 different themes to keep my promise or just let it go as an opportunity I failed to grab when I had the chance. Well, right now I have decided to let it go.

However, why I forgot about it is still bothering me. The normal things like being busy, did not really want to do it and other such things come to mind and I can't really tell you why it was not at the back of my mind especially considering that I don't use a calendar or any such tool to keep track of stuff that is due yet I always seem to remember when stuff is due such as when I have exams so I can study & ensure I go to class. However, this might be because I seem to be constantly reminded of these dates by teachers and my fellow classmates. I also remember people's birthdays without any aid although I have started using Google Calendar to keep track of people's birthdays to ensure that I don't break my own “Birthday Law”. Other uses of Google Calendar have been to keep track of US Holidays and televised NFL games. Every other thing on my schedule I run from my head despite having a phone with a calendar, a PDA, Outlook, and Google Calendar.

This might have to change. I need to look into syncing Outlook and Google Calendar. I just did a quick Google search and it seems promising. Will look into this.

For those of you who schedule and plan your lives, any tips?

You know the cool thing about writing, you start typing and your thoughts start flowing and at the end of the day, what you have is different from what you purposed to write. When I started writing this, I was writing just to rant that I had writer's block and I ended up repenting for not keeping my promise. In that kind of scenario, am I supposed to change the title to keep it in line with the finished product or leave it to align with the original concept?

Overdue pictures

I might have just set a Facebook record for the number of photos uploaded in one night. I just uploaded nine albums (should be seven but Facebook's limit of 60 photos per album means I had to create two albums for some) none of which is recent. And I also uploaded my pictures from last summer from my time at Microsoft to PicasaWeb. Pictures from this summer were uploaded earlier.

How do I decide where I put pictures? There is no formula or anything. So far I seem to be using the following rule:

• Howard related stuff go on Facebook
• Internship related stuff on PicasaWeb
• Everything else on Flickr

There's so much I need to put on Flickr but I am having issues getting some of them from cds: Will fight that battle another time. I might need to get a Pro Flickr account to deal with some of these.

Since the albums are all from different places and times, I will give a link to each one for interested people.

Microsoft - Summer 2005

• Jimmy's bbq
• BAM bbq at Keith's house.
• 4th of July bbq
• Flying with Hassan, Amara, and Bambo
• Set of random pictures at the end that includes a trip to Safeco field, Hassan's team and intern presentations

Howard - Last semester

• FOCUS 2006 (GaTech)
• IPals interest meeting in Feb. 2006 (here and here)
• Microsoft cocktail party Jan. 2006 (here and here)
• Church cookout at Sola's place Feb. 2006
  
• 2006 career fair banquet
  
• Superbowl XL at Chi's place
• UPE induction

And for those interested, I tagged folks in the TBP pictures from last month (here and here).

Happy Thanksgiving

I have so many things to be thankful for today and I am not going to bore anyone with them. Hope you had a blessed day.

Colts lose; Unbeaten season is over

Here.

No knowledge is lost

Big fat lie!!!

I have heard this so many times from different people and I want to come out and tell anyone who believes this that this is a lie. Knowledge is lost. I am not a scientist so I can't prove this so I will just talk based on my experience.

There are so many things I have known over the years which I don't remember anymore. I am absolutely sure I knew these things not that I crammed them for some test or something. Few examples:

• I used to be pretty good in Math when I was in high school and was able to solve all types of Math problems. Now, not so anymore. I can't even remember things I did in Calculus II and III that I did in my sophomore and junior years in college. I couldn't even help my friend with a Probability problem a few days ago and I took the class in Fall '05.
  
• Because of my affinity for Math, I was pretty good at storing people's phone numbers in my head. If I knew you before I had a phone and you had a phone number I had to call, I knew your number offhand, no question. Now, not so much.
• When I was young, I used to read the Bible quite often and knew a lot of scriptures but as time has gone by, I have forgotten quite a few of these scriptures.
• I have met quite a few people in my life by virtue of going to multiple schools, working in different places and I have been known through the years to remember faces and names. Well, not anymore, I have started forgetting people's faces and names that I haven't seen in a while and it's scaring me.
  
• At Howard, we take C++ in our first few programming classes and then switch to Java / C# in the latter classes as we do more higher-level stuff. Well, as I had been doing so much Java and C# programming, I actually forgot some C++ stuff, one of which was how to create a new C++ class. I tried using Class c = new Class(); as opposed to Class c; to create a new Class. I forgot about C++ semantics such as creating stuff on the stack as opposed to creating it on the heap. When I was shown the error of my ways, I went to brush up on my C++ coding and I can never forget these things again.
  

Now, all these might just be because I have a problem and I have started forgetting stuff and I might need to go see somebody to clarify that there's nothing wrong but that's a different story for a different day.

One thing that seems to have been consistent with all of the examples given above is that I forgot stuff after failing to use the gained knowledge consistently. Maybe the saying “No knowledge is lost” should be changed to “No knowledge is lost if the gained knowledge is continually applied” or something along those lines. There is a saying “practice makes perfect”; should the two sayings be merged? For example, I still know all the numbers of people that I speak with regularly despite the fact that the numbers are now in my cell phone and I don't have to memorize them anymore. The fact that I see the numbers anytime a call is coming in or going out means something still triggers in my brain and I don't lose the information.

On the other hand, I might be completely misreading the saying and I am misconstruing it to mean something specific for my own purposes. Also, what exactly do the words “knowledge” and “lost”mean? Do the meanings apply to the way I am using them here? Is forgetting something different from “losing” it? I am not even going to go there, I will leave it to you to draw your own conclusions regarding that.

Also, there is a myth? that we use 10% of our brain power. Well, maybe I have reached that said 10% and my brain, in order to gather new information has to discard some. Well, maybe not necessarily discard it but swapping it from RAM to disk to create space for new vital information. That's why it's easier to revise something you know than to learn something afresh. Revision entails just moving data around within the brain while learning something means allocating space for it.

Maybe it's actually not lost and is hidden somewhere deep down from where we have to retrieve it. Now, I am confused.

Ridiculously funny: computer skills

Here.

1 down, 7 to go

I dropped Real Estate today and I kinda feel bad especially knowing that I could still have gotten an A in the class. But Real Estate had to take one for the team. I have other classes and other responsibilities which I have to devote more time to and Real Estate seems like the easiest class to drop. And the fun? part of the class was just starting: having to go to appraise houses and all that. But that would have taken way too much time and I need time to get back on track with school, work and my projects.

The more I think of it, I should have taken this class P/F instead of taking it for credit. Then, I could have learned what I needed to learn without worrying about grades. Does anyone know how to take classes P/F? It might be useful next semester in case I go haywire like I did this semester and take so many classes I don't need to take but want to take.

On a completely different note but somewhat related to this entry, why does everything in school have to be in groups? I agree that in the real world, you have to work in teams and all that but not in every area of your life. In my eight classes, I have had five different teams, six if you count the “Digital Design jeopardy” exam that we had. Now, that was fun!!! I don't mind being in teams. Actually, I like being in teams but having to juggle so many different teams is not easy.

Got locked out of my room... again

For the second time in one or two weeks, I was locked out of my room and I had to pay to get back into my room. ... aarggggggggh

I tried dropping a class yesterday...

...but I couldn't. I went to the professor's office with the add/drop class form and I couldn't bring myself to ask him to sign it. Why? I am not sure. I think it's because I know I can still get an A in the class if I do the work. But the problem is I don't want to do the work. When I decided to take the class, I wanted to learn about Real Estate and stuff but since the beginning of the semester, I haven't learnt much because I haven't been dedicated and put the work into listening in class and being attentive. I have a test on Tuesday which I am not ready for in any stretch of the imagination. I don't have the textbook and I am not sure what to do. The deadline to drop classes in Friday the 17^th.

It's now a battle of wills. Which will prevail? My desire to know more about Real Estate or my desire to make my work load easier and learn about Real Estate another way.

Vista released to marketing

In what has to be one of the shortest and most powerful messages of all time, Jim Allchin tells us that Windows has been released to manufacturing. This means Vista is on track to be released in January next year.

YouTube is Time's invention of the year

Here. [Via Mashable]

My new favorite toy: Virtual Earth

Virtual earth is my new favorite toy. See this entry from the Virtual Earth team for more. There seems to be one problem though. It seems to be a memory hog. With only four tabs open in IE: Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Windows Live Spaces, and Virtual Earth, IE is using 327k of RAM. I know the other sites do a lot of AJAX stuff but memory consumption in IE has never been this much before now. If this were Firefox with its memory issues, I would understand.

Update: As soon as I closed the Virtual Earth tab, memory usage dropped to 180k meaning it was using about 140k of RAM. I have 1 gig of RAM on my laptop meaning its not that bad but with other applications such as Firefox, Visual Studio, IM clients, Google Desktop, Symantec open or running, it adds up.

Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Firefox and IE

For some weird reason, I have been unable to access Gmail and Yahoo Mail since yesterday on Firefox. I thought both were down and had to use the Gmail Mobile Client to compose a very important email. I need to get a QWERTY phone but that's a different story.

For some reason, I decided to try them in IE7 and they worked. Now, I have no idea what is going on but this simple reason now means I am running two browsers at the moment. If this trend continues, I might use IE7 more and more which means I stop using Firefox. But I can't stop using Firefox, why? because there are a lot of extensions I have come to depend on such as greasemonkey, cocomment, ....

Hmm, the list is supposed to be longer but some extensions have equivalent functionality in IE or are now built into Firefox 2. Del.ico.us has both a Firefox and an IE extension and I have both. Even cocomment has a bookmarklet for use in other browsers. For the Web developer toolbar, there is the IE developer toolbar. Google Web Accelerator works in both Firefox and IE. For Venkman, I can use Visual Studio. StumbleUpon works in both Firefox and IE. IETab is replaced by ... IE itself. SessionSaver has been rendered obsolete by Firefox 2. And all my themes don't yet work in Firefox 2 so they don't come into consideration. I also use Google Browser Sync but since my desktop is down, it's not critical now.

So, it seems the only extension that I use that I can't get equivalent functionality in IE is greasemonkey. So, I have a proposition for Microsoft, add the option to restore a session and to remember the values that were also in text boxes and you would have some less “power users” like myself seriously considering using IE7 as their main browser. For now, it's a viable second browser contending for my attention albeit one I use way more than I used IE6 after Firefox came out.

Mary Ann, Seth, if you see this, can you pass this on to the IE folks? Thanks.

Update: (1.39pm) I can now access Gmail.
Update2: (11/9 10:07pm) I can now access Yahoo Mail.

Virtual Earth: wow

Microsoft has released a new version of Virtual Earth that actually competes with Google Earth and it's pretty cool. If you are not familiar with either product, Virtual Earth is a browser-based product while Google Earth is a desktop application. The only caveat is that this new version of Virtual Earth only works on IE on Windows. It requires a download but it's worth it. For those of you on Windows who only use Firefox and don't want to use IE, you can download this Firefox extension: IETab which allows you to render pages in IE while still in Firefox.

Go ahead and try it. While playing around with it, I was able to see the Towers, my dorm, and Greene Stadium, the Howard University football stadium.

Have fun with it. [Via Virtual Earth Blog]

Fergie: 20 years at the helm

Yesterday, Sir. Alex Ferguson celebrated his twentieth year in charge of Manchester United. I am not a Man U fan but I respect what he has done for the club and his numerous achievements. Congrats, Fergie.

You can see his profile on Wikipedia.

Last team standing

I finally get my wish of the Colts being the last unbeaten team with the Colts defeating the odds to overcome the Patriots and the Bears losing to the Dolphins in Chicago.

And Vinatieri amazingly missed two field goals after I praised him for being dependable in the clutch.

There are still a lot of tough games left so nobody is talking unbeaten but beating the Patriots two years in a row at Foxborough has to be good.

This is why the Colts traded Vanderjagt for Vinatieri

Vanderjagt misses clutch FGs. Vinatieri makes them.

Update: Vinatieri missed two FGs today. And apparently Vanderjagt's missed FG might have been down to the offensive line not properly blocking.

Tired of those mac ads?

This is for you.

Which mac ads, you ask? If you haven't seen them, you can see them here. I didn't realize that there were so many of them. I have no problem with Macs and would love to get one sometime soon if only to just get familiar with it. But I do have a problem with the ads as they seem so cheesy. Especially with the recent problems Macs have been having. I don't like it when someone tries to get me to use their products by undermining the competition. I think that you should be able to try and sell me on your product based on its merits only. But what do I know? I am not into advertising and I have never sold anything before.

GTalk gets offline messages

There are many ways to get in touch with me and one guaranteed way is by IM. Well, which IM client do I use, you ask? I use quite a few. I use MSN Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, and AIM. I use all because I have contacts who prefer different IM clients and the only way to get in touch with them is to use the IM client of their choice. With the recent interoperability of Yahoo and WLM, I can now talk to someone on another IM network from whichever client I am on.

Ever since I was introduced to IM, Yahoo Messenger has had the capability to send offline messages. WLM recently added it and you can read more about it here. Well, Google Talk has joined the fray. Now, you can send IMs to your contacts on GTalk who are offline and they will receive it when they sign in. [Via GoogleTalkabout]

Gmail Mobile Client

If you are like me and you have a Gmail account and use your phone to check emails from time to time, you will be happy with Google's new offering: Gmail Mobile Client. It's Java enabled so phones that aren't Java enabled (some Windows Mobile phones) can't use them. You can see a list of supported phones here.

It's fast and sleek and looks and feels like Gmail and it's way better than accessing your email from the mobile browser. If your phone is supported, you can download the Mobile Client from http://www.gmail.com/app. [Via the Google Blog].

Update: Changed title and references from “Google Mobile Client” to “Gmail Mobile Client”.

All part of being a Gunner

As an Arsenal fan, I am used to days like today. Well, not exactly like today but days in the spirit of today where we have so many chances and are unable to find the back of the net. I don't watch a lot of Arsenal games so when I read that we had a lot of chances in a game and we were unable to find the back of the net, I take it with a pinch of salt: I understand what everybody is talking about but since I don't experience it, I can't really get what they are talking about. For the games I watch, we manage to at least score one goal though we might not get the result we deserve. Not today!!!

I am not going to go into the game play-by-play. If you didn't watch the game, you can get a recap here. To illustrate how bad it was, Wenger says today's performance was our best performance in the Champions League in the last 10 years. Wow!!! We've had a few good games in this competition. For him to make that statement, that shows how well we played. Also, The Sun says that when UEFA start awarding points for artistic interpretation, Arsenal will win the Champions League.

I can't comprehend or explain what happened today but these are the kinds of nights one gets used to as an Arsenal fan.

The only thing I can say is that on average, I don't think we tried to score the perfect goal today. There were glimpses of our past sins but they weren't the underlying theme. We just inexplicably failed to find the back of the net.

Hopefully, we would still be able to make the next round...