Archive for category Stuff
Tethering the Motorola DROID Android phone on Linux (Ubuntu Karmic)
Tethering lets you to use the 3G connection on your Android-based cell phone to browse the internet from your laptop. Some phones come with tethering applications build int, but on other phones tethering is not possible – or you have to jump through a lot of hoops to enable it.
The nice new Motorola DROID phone does not have a tethering ability by standard (all-though a Verizon representative told that Verizon will be coming out with something at some point) but it is still possible to tether it using the Proxoid application. Unlike other approaches, you do not have to root your phone.
A detailed installation guide is available here. To use this guide with the Motorola DROID phone you should put the following line in /etc/udev/rules.d/11-android.rules:
SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="22b8", SYSFS{idProduct}=="41db", MODE="0666", OWNER="USERNAME"
If you’re on Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10 you should restart udev using the following command:
sudo service udev restart
When trying to connect to the android phone you mave have to run
sudo ./adb kill-server
sudo ./adb start-server
Before you can see the device (this happens if the server was already started when you changed the udev rules). This works on Ubuntu Karmic Koala.
Be aware that tethering may not be allowed by your service provider, you should read your contract to find out.
PostDoc’ing at Duke
Today I’m starting my new job as a Postdoctoral Associate at Duke University where I’ll be working with Pankaj Agarwal. I am now trying to find a car (anyone here selling a car in the Raleigh/Durham area?).
Now on twitter
I have finally created a twitter account, follow me while it’s still hot!
Also, it’ll be awesome, I promise!
LIVE! DAIMI ACM Qualification Programming Contest
The live scoreboard can be seen here: http://acm.tju.edu.cn/toj/vcontest/ranklist1951.html .
We have about 15 people participating right now, only those who have submitted something shows up on the scoreboard.
The contest ends at 19:00 european central time.
SoCG 2008 Update
There’s only one session left of the second day of SoCG 2008 here at the University of Maryland in College Park. The temperature is close to 40 degrees C and it’s very humid so everyone stays inside in the air-conditioned building of the conference venue. As usual it’s hard to dress such that you’re not completely fried when you go outside, and such that you don’t freeze when you’re inside. The conference is taking place at the business school, I’m definitely not used to seeing stock tickers in computer labs – fun detail.
Bardia presented our paper, I/O-Efficient Algorithms for Computing Contours on a Terrain, as the very first day of the talk. The audience raised a couple of interesting points which I’m sure we’ll think more about after the conference.
The closes thing to a conference excursion was two busses that took us to Dupont Circle in downtown Washington, DC for dinner yesterday. I went to a Korean restaurant with a couple of people and had good Korean-style steak thingy, and I liked walking in the Dupont Circle area, which hadn’t explored on foot before.
Tonight is the conference banquet, that should be fun.
Flight Log
This blog needs more random junk! Being a flight geek I decided to keep track of my flight history, so far 46 legs in 18 months (!). I wil try to keep the log updated – mostly for my own amusement.
It would also be cool to attach pictures to the different places as well, similar to Mihai’s picture page.
[Update]: Forgot trip to Waterloo in December, haven’t bought the tickets yet but it will probably raise the grand total to 50 flights in 18 months.
[Update 2]: Yay, Air Canada has direct flights from RDU to Toronto (YYZ).
Israel
I have not been very good at updating this blog lately, I personally blame the fact that I have both Facebook and IM accounts. It is more convenient for me to update my facebook status, so my facebook-friends get more updates than the readers of this blog.
Anyways, a fortnight ago I travelled to Eilat, Israel for the European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA). The conference hotel was situated right by the red sea and a few hundred meters from the Jordan-border and sported several swimming pools and bars.
View from my hotel room’s balcony.
The lagoon on the back side of the hotel, the mountains in the distance are in Jordan. Read the rest of this entry »
Noise Cancelling Headphones
I ended up buying a set of Sony MDR-NC60 at Circuit City here in Durham. So far I am very pleased with them, they come with airplane plugs and a handy bag and the sound quality is quite good. Furthemore, when the noise cancelling feature is turned on, the hum of A/C devices pretty much disappears, I am looking forward to see how effective they will be on airplanes. I constantly turn the volume up way to high on the crappy head phones that most airlines supply – hopefully I won’t have to do that with these.
Way to go Nokia
This is a very good Nokia campaign, it summarizes parts of what is soo wrong with the iPhone.
Here is Nokia’s product page for one of their devices, I like the focus of the ad campaign.