Welcome to the blog of Can Sar, a Stanford CS major. This blog is made up of my thoughts on Computer Science and the computer industry, as well as ever exciting tales from my life.

September 29, 2004

Studying GRE Words

Studying for the GRE, especially studying words, can do weird things to people. This AIM conversation is a great example: Can Sar: thanks dude Can Sar: dude is an awesome word Can Sar: though cantankerous is too Eric Sun: true On a more serious note, the studying is working out well, and I'm learning an average of 20 words per day. I'm trying to finish a list of about 1300, so it should take around 3 months. This would be...
Posted on September 29, 2004 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 28, 2004

Let's get it started

I've spent the last few days watching movies and setting up my room. Enough of that. Today is the day to get started, and I am ready. I just got an email about CS 199, and things are looking good. I don't have an exact unit count or project description yet, but I am starting to prepare for the beginning of the class. Today will be a day of reading and awesomeness. I am completely and utterly excited....
Posted on September 28, 2004 01:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 27, 2004

A Day to Unplug

Yesterday was rather ridiculous and not too productive. First of all, I just realized that my US to Europe Plug Converter, is slightly too tight for my laptop plug to fit, so I am now filing a part of it away, cause I don't think I'll be able to buy one here. Unfortunately, after filing and cutting away on it for about two hours, I tried to fit the plug, and while it wasn't far enough to work, it was...
Posted on September 27, 2004 02:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 25, 2004

Arriving at Stanford

I arrived here yesterday at around 1:30 (Pacific Time, the one below my blog is set to) and dumped my stuff in my room before setting out for a tour of campus. The only thing I did before was trying to get a wireless connection to write home, without much luck. It turned out that most people aren't on campus, or were not in their rooms. The only people I was able to find initially were Eric Sun and Eric...
Posted on September 25, 2004 08:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 22, 2004

Getting into Photography

Few of you can understand how obsessed my dad is with his Canon 10D. There is no denying that the camera is one of the best hobby digital cameras out there. Today I rediscovered Robert Love's Blog, after wondering why he didn't post anything for several months (he changed servers). I then stumbled upon this post. I remember Miguel carrying around a large digital SLR camera during VM '04, but did not know it was a 10D. Since yesterday I...
Posted on September 22, 2004 01:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

September 21, 2004

MT Blacklist Upgrade Horror

I tried to update MT Blacklist today, but had horrible problems with tons of incompatibilities because of differing versions of MT (3.0D, 3.1, 3.11 ?) and MT Blacklist (2.0b, 2.0e ?). Now its mostly working after several weird hacks, but its lacking a bunch of features. I would appreciate it if all you spammers took a break until Jay Allen is done updating this thing. ;-) Update: I'm slowly getting the hang of this thing. Comment moderation is actually amazingly...
Posted on September 21, 2004 06:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 20, 2004

Flickr Photo Blog

Some of you might have already heard of Flickr and others might have seen my new Moblog bar on the left. All of you others should read carefully. Flickr is a weird mix between a Photo Album, Social Networking Tool and a Moblog. It allows you to upload your pictures and make them available to either everyone on the web, or just certain users (Friends, Family, etc.). It also allows you to post pictures through email, which is especially nice...
Posted on September 20, 2004 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 20, 2004

Movable Type 3.1

I've made the swith from Movable Type 2.66 to 3.1. While updating I almost managed to delete all my templates, but somehow they miraculously stuck around. After tweaking some things, I am quite happy with this new version. This transition is part of an ongoing effort to keep the technology behind this blog update. I have been looking into several solutions for Moblogging, and am staying with Flickr for the moment (more about Flickr in later posts). Since I am...
Posted on September 20, 2004 07:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 20, 2004

Get Organized!

43 Folders is one of the best websites I have come across in a long time. 43 Folders is a blog about how to organize your work and computer life. Since discovering 43 Folders I have revised my Laptop folder structure, allowing to find stuff faster. I have installed and started using several programs that have made my work more effective. The first one was QuickSilver, an app-launcher with many amazing features, such as opening a file, appending to it,...
Posted on September 20, 2004 01:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 17, 2004

The Month of Firefox

Its time to take back the web. Many of us have had to fight with the dominance of IE for years now. We had to accept its security holes, outdated standard support, and terrible rendering. We had to live with Popups, Active X Viruses, and random crashes. Some of us did not know what alternative browser to use, or thought it too complicated. That time is over. Every day now, newssites are full of reviews of the excellent Firefox browser....
Posted on September 17, 2004 04:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

September 14, 2004

Linux Networking

I'm currently reading through the documentation for the Linux Networking Code, and having read the TCP/IP Illustrated Series is really helping me here. It is now more than a year since I read those 3 books, and I did not understand all the details of the code in Volume 2. But I remember enough to be able to get acquainted with the code quickly. Most importantly, I just found that Linux does something that was not a good design back...
Posted on September 14, 2004 01:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 13, 2004

Understanding Advanced x86

After focusing on the Linux Kernel for the last few days, I am now going back to the "basics" and looking at how exactly advanced x86 features work. Programmers who have read about the x86 ISA have probably heard about real and protected mode, and understand the basics of segmentation. Really understanding these features is, however, difficult which is why many of them are used as little as possible in modern code. Unfortunately, programmers must still understand these concepts when...
Posted on September 13, 2004 02:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 10, 2004

Useful and L33t ;-)

Last year I always admired Max for having a Emacs command reference card posted on his wall. For those of you who often surf the web looking for ever illusive gdb, Emacs, Html, or CSS commands, shortcuts or tags, I have a useful solution that will also show off how much you value your coding. Simply go to refcards.com and print out some of their Coding Reference Cards and put them up on your wall. You will never have to...
Posted on September 10, 2004 06:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 09, 2004

RSS: The GPRS KillerApp

Yesterday I wrote a short post that I was going to publish here, but then changed my mind and decided to publish it at NewMobileComputing, OSNews' sister site. In the future I am going to publish some of my longer technical writings on sites like OSNews. For now, take a look at my ideas on RSS on cellphones....
Posted on September 9, 2004 02:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 08, 2004

Have You Learnt Your Lesson?

If I had to choose the most important thing I learnt in college, it is this: Things are not as simple as I thought. This is excellently summarized in this passage by Paul Graham in his essay on Essays. The more anomalies you've seen, the more easily you'll notice new ones. Which means, oddly enough, that as you grow older, life should become more and more surprising. When I was a kid, I used to think adults had it all...
Posted on September 8, 2004 01:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

September 03, 2004

How Far Would You Go?

Spending so much time on 2 different continents as I do, can mean being separated from loved ones, family and friends for large parts of the year. However, few of my friends would be so dedicated in their endeavors to get away as Doug: Doug Wilson: what time is it there? Can Sar: 10am Doug Wilson: wow! Doug Wilson: its 10 pm here; we're on exact opposite sides of the world Can Sar: where are you? Doug Wilson: Hawaii Doug...
Posted on September 3, 2004 04:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 02, 2004

I LOVE APPLE

I've been writing a long entry on last weekend's trip, but since it is not finish yet, I could not wait to post these amazing news. Last September I bought a beautiful Apple 20" Cinema Display (of the old design of course). As great as this display is, it has the small blemish of a broken power button, which will activate at completely random times. When the power button (which is electronic and touch sensitive) goes off for longer than...
Posted on September 2, 2004 05:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack