Blog Home Page » Archived Blog Posts in January, 2007
Tags: sports tennis Roddick closed the gap? Oops!! Bow to Maestro Federer!!
Jaws dropped, literally dropped as I watched THE match. At a loss of words of how a person can play such precision tennis. Feel really sorry for Roddick, but man, this was just a one sided performance where he couldn't help but be a bystander as Roger went about his out-of-the-world shots. Absolute clinical destruction.
In addition to that, you just might conclude you can't get any more perfect than this. 6-4 6-0 6-2?? 6-0 against arguably the best server in the game? Numbers just don't do justice to how the match was played. Even then, a mind blowing stats: 1 unforced error in the second set and Roger only gave up 6 points in that set. Wow.
Now's the fun part, some journalist suggested Roddick's post-match press conference performance was better than the on-court performance. Roddick's reply? "No S---". 
And another article from my favorite tennis author: Jon Werheim.
I'll link up the video highlights from the Australian Open website as soon as it becomes available. On rolls the Fed Express.
Tags: sports Colts are off to Super Bowl!!!!!!!!!
If you missed the Colts v. Patriots AFC game, you just missed out on one of the greatest comebacks in football. Enough said. Go Colts!! Go Manning!! Watch out Gross & Urlacher Co.
Tags: music Daughtry, surprisingly good!
I am no American Idol fan my friends, although lately I've been enjoying the new season with all these god awful renditions from wannabe next Idol contestants. The seasoning opening shows are really fun to watch, albeit unfortunately laughter coming at other people's expense. Speaking of Idol, Chris Daughtry from last season's idol released his eponymous album last Nov '06. Just last night I heard the "It's Not Over" track on VH1 and boy was I sold. Many of you will liken this track to something that Nickelback would do, but man he got one heck of a vocal range and the song's a cracker (not surprising it's numero uno at top 20 in vh1).
Anyways without further adieu, off I went to iTunes store to get a copy of his album. Well worth the buy my friends, well worth the buy. Go get a copy yourself, trust me on this one: you won't be disappointed. Take a little down time to enjoy some pop rock nirvana.
Tags: technical programming yahoo Search now powered by Yahoo!
I give up on Google. After I switched my webhost to dreamhost (this was unintentional rhyming 
), I signed up with Google's webmaster tools. Got my sitemap.xml all nicely set up so that the good ol Google Bot would shine a little light on my site and start indexing the contents. If everything was to go according to the plan, Google's index should have been updated with my site's content in just a few days and then the site's Google custom search would finally kick in. Days went by, weeks went by and I was actually observing the Google bot come into my site just about on a daily basis. And what happened? Nothing, nada, absolutely nothing got added/updated into the Google index 
. The google group on webmaster tools was of no help either.
In the meantime, msn bots and yahoo bots have done a terrific job regularly indexing updates on my site. Yahoo has done a much much better job at it. My patience has cracked with Google and now my site's search feature is powered by Yahoo. Just be nice fellas, keep your queries at a minimum, I max out at 500 a day 
.
In case you're interested in using yahoo's web services in your site or whatever project: check it out, they pretty clear and immensely helpful in their tutorials in a variety of languages (programming speak).
Happy searching! Cheers!
Tags: tennis sports Australian Open 2007 Men's Tennis Thoughts
Alright, alright this was just an exhibition tournament at Kooyong, but Andy Roddick did beat Roger Federer for only the second time (only once officially) in their head-to-head encounters with a 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 scoreline. I ain't the only one excited about what's going to happen in men's tennis at the Australian Open (Jan 15th - 20th). Pat McEnroe, Pam Shriver are hedging their bets with Roddick stealing the show this time from Federer. Read some about their predictions for the open down under here in an ESPN article.
While a big time Federer Express fan myself, it is good to see some competition coming his way for sake for the game's popularity. Other than that, all up for Roger breaking Sampras's record soon enough, he clearly deserves it for the way he has played this beautiful game of tennis.
Speaking of Federer, how can I possibly ignore his kryptonite and arch nemesis Rafa. One fan compared Nadal to Jim Courier, as a player whose physical brand of the game is his main ingredient and injuries are catching up fast with the pressure he's putting on his body. More on a Jon Wertheim with fans Q&A article available here. By the way, I would strongly disagree with the fan's assessment of Courier's game as similar to Nadal's. Courier had one of the most amazing forehands in the game, and his game was more than about brute force.
Tennis fans, the new year is upon us and let's see what the wizard Federer has in store for us this time around! Enjoy!
Tags: apple electronics iPhone's here, well ... not quite yet.
Unless you have been living under a rock, you are probably informed about the new iPhone unveiling at the Mac Conference few days back. It is unfortunate that we have to wait to another 6 months before we get our hands on these mind-blowing device. I was all up and ready for breaking my piggy bank , $499 is pretty steep for a student. Due to the FCC, Mr. Steve Jobs had to come out with it sooner than he would've probably liked. Watch Jobs's ground-breaking keynote speech here. And there's a cool article on Times online about Apple's new direction with iPhone. Enjoy!
Tags: sql postgreSQL rdbms technical PostgreSQL - psql - Some Indispensable Commands
I just keep on forgetting some of the following useful commands when using psql, simply because they are just too darn cryptic. Might as well etch them on this blog for future recall purpose in order to avoid performing the glorious art of indefinite google query formulations and scouring the postgreSQL documentation to obtain these commands.
- See all the available tables (includes base table & views) in your database:
select * from information_schema.tables; - See the definitions of your views (provided you're using public schema) in the database:
select * from information_schema.views where table_schema='public'; - See all the sequences in your database:
select * from information_schema.sequences; - See current activities on the database:
select * from pg_stat_activity; - See access privileges or a quick overview of tables, views and sequences in your database, a psql shortcut:
\z - See table, views or sequence properties in details, a psql shortcut:
\d [table|views|sequence name] - See role properties of users in the database
select * from pg_roles;
Happy Querying!!
Tags: video movies entertainment Children of Men
Just watched this film this weekend. Clive Owens's performance was simply sublime and so was Michael Caine's. Julianne Moore was terrific in it too, albeit a very short role in this film. The premise has to do with the extinction of humanity due to our lack of ability to procreate any longer. I am not going to critique the film, as the critics can do a much better better job in articulating that aspect of the film. What struck me most was how immigrants were treated as nothing but savages. In times when desperation sets in for the natives, life could very well imitate art in this case, as it has in the past and probably will in the future. Cracker of a film, very thoughtful and of course highly recommended.
Tags: entertainment movies humor Mike Judge's "Idiocracy"
I consider Office Space to be one of the coolest films of all time, particularly because it gives me a glimpse of my immediate future: stuck in a cube. Anyhoo, the maker of Office Space, is gracing us with another smart, sharp dialogue laden release: Idiocracy. The movie didn't too well in it's theatrical release in Atlanta and the studio execs shelved it from making it a nationwide release. We're still lucky as the movie will be out on DVD this Jan 9th.
The movie's cast includes Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph (big fan of her from SNL). Here's a little synopsis from wikipedia to get you interested:
Ok, the setup might appear lame, but the critics have been giving it some glowing reviews for smart satire and anticipate a cult following much like Office Space. Definitely looking forward to Jan 9th, hope you guys will too.
Tags: technology electronics apple Hopefully soon-to-be ecstatic iPhone owner
It's that time again where I will make a free fall dive into a binge purchasing spree (with my student budget no less!). There are several items in contention: xbox 360, a gaming pc (when was the last time I bought a pc?), nintendo wii (getting a major mario nostalgia hit as of late), nintendo DS Lite (mario again), a replacement for my 3 year sony ericsson workhorse of a cellphone, a digital camera. But before I set out on buying my next electronics fetish, the buck currently stops at the MacWorld Expo this Jan 8-12th for me.
I'll wait on Steve Jobs to unveil what many of us are hoping he will: an iPhone. There's been a tremendous amount of buzz in the industry about this and this is old news to many of you mac fans out there. Furthermore, a rumor I'd love to believe as well: apple makes deal with cingular as the sole wireless carrier distributor of the iPhone device for the first half of 2007. Works for me as a satisfied cingular customer!
I also wanted to share with you guys some incredible eye-candy work of a few creative bunch of people. They have been hypothesizing and drawing up cool interface prototypes of the up-and-coming iPhone. Check it out and salivate as we excitedly await the arrival of the iPhone.
Cheers!