Google rolls out new goodies

Today I noticed a couple of new additions made by google. First, is the addition of themes into gmail. The theme feature is cool, especially considering that I had been using stylish firefox extension along with a nice theme. For people familiar with the cool ninja theme easter egg in the google reader. Even that’s available!

Second is ranking in google search results. With this google is stepping further into the crowd oriented internet a la digg and friends.

Science Friday

The other day I ran across this article while reading SciScoop. I found it worth a read. What’s more, it even explains some ideas in this post.

Quantum Entanglement

The quantum world is full of complementary variables such as position/momentum and wave/particle. The equations describing quantum mechanics are such that precise knowledge of one complementary variable precludes knowledge of the other–regardless of the measurement technique. Even if we could devise a way of accurately measuring position without affecting momentum, the momentum variable would still be imprecise. This is quantum uncertainty as defined by the Copenhagen interpretation, subject to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.

[via Sciscoop]

When in Rome…

A guy sits down with a girl, takes out a cigarette and starts trying to light it. He has some extreme difficulty getting it lit, and has obviously never smoked before.

Girl (laughing): Hey, do you want some help with that?
Guy: No, no, I’ve got to practice smoking. Let me do it.
Girl: Seriously? You’re practicing how to smoke?
Guy: Yeah! It’s on my list of things to do. See? (takes out agenda) “Laundry, conference sign-up, smoke.”
Girl looks stunned.
Guy: I don’t want to look like an idiot when I go to Amsterdam!

[via Overheard At McGill]

Social Media is dead!

Recently I was thinking about the pervalence of social media sites. I am of the opinion that they are the reality TV of the internet technology. In the sense that there’s no great innovation behind them. There’s no real renaissance that’s happening. Only a re-packaging of existing material. Reading this article on Startup North I find myself agreeing with him. The fact of the matter is that in the end social media is merely a platform for the lazy.
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Technical Difficulties

I upgraded WordPress about a month back to version 2.6.2 and since then I’ve had issues. First problem was the upgrade script thought it was a fresh install so it created a new DB instance, and I had to go in change the configuration. And I just realized last week that for some reason my RSS feed generator was not working anymore. I looked into it and found out that all my pages had stopped working as well. So now, I have to do a fresh install of WordPress to fix the issues. In the meantime, the website will be somewhat flaky.