work on nostalgic memos quite frequently when I travel. I look back at my life, my childhood in particular. Certain memories are simply eroded as time goes by and the only way to preserve these memories is by writing permanent, detailed notes (or taking photos, videos and and the like).

The other possibility is to carry on living in the ‘adult world’, completely forgetting what cannot possibly contribute to the future, yet still represents an age of freedom and carelessness. Some memories are better left behind and forgotten, but without memory of one’s family and age of innocence, this riddance from invaluable memories is like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Take a moment to remember; every now and then…

friend has just sent me the following mock-up image. He occasionally has a play with graphical software and other people’s photos are used in the process.

So apparently I am responsible for one terrible disaster. I had never realised it until he told me.

UE to an important paper deadline I stayed awake for 30 hours straight yesterday. Ultimately, and oddly enough, 3 hours of sleep were enough after that. They compensated for the long procrastination of bedtime and rejuvenated the body fully. This cannot be healthy, can it?

The many issues that pertain to sleep and rest have always intrigued me. I even participated in sleep disorder newsgroup where I could engage in conversations with experts in the field. I am usually able to catch up with sleep entirely while travelling. I could never quite identify a pattern which would indicate how much sleep is truly necessary on a given day. ‘Luxury sleep’ or excessive sleep is also worth investigating. It seems as though many individuals tend to oversleep and still remain tired. One’s daytime occupation definitely plays a role too.

I once wrote about my own personal way of falling asleep immediately. This seems to have become a fairly popular Web page. It is amazing how little we think about an occupation that makes up about one third of our lives.

suppose that could have said that “I leave to go on holiday” or “take a vacation” this afternoon. To me, it does not feel as though these expressions would be suitable though. They bear a positive connotation. “Taking a break” sounds like a better fit, but experience suggests that information anxiety and Internet addiction will take their toll. This time (for a change) I promised myself to remain off-line until February.

I reluctantly look forward to my Easter break, but it seems like pressure will again be associated with presentation of our work. It will possibly supersede the joy of some sunny days with family in Florida. I am yet to discover if I can still enjoy vacations. I once committed myself to avoiding them if possible. It was a new year’s resolution even.

Previous breaks (pessimistic/melancholic):

• my past experiences
• Autumn Vacation

recently volunteered to take browser compatibility more seriously. I never truly believed there was a place for platform discrimination. However, refusal to upgrade from Internet Explorer to Firefox is not quite so excusable. Web standards should be fundamental enough to be supported at the very core of a browser and behave reliably. And yet, I realise that my attitude must change.

The context of this post is WordPress, a blogging platform whose development and community I have been a part of for over a year. In fact, I have put my name down among the Roles in WordPress Wiki page. To quote:

Testing / QA

Browser Testing – Testing Firefox, IE, Opera, and Safari against major WP functionality; documenting bugs; coding workarounds.

• I have a large variety of browsers which are built for Linux (including old versions), so I will continue to test nightlies and report inconsistencies and incompatibilities whenever time permits. I can use emulation to test under Safari and IE, but I have WinXP and an iMac at work. –[[User:schestowitz|schestowitz]] 3:38, 13 Jan 2006 (GMT)

The idea of roles in WordPress was introduced less than a fortnight ago. While editing the Wiki, I also decided to bind a vague personal description to an empty placeholder page which carries my name. I chose:

An ordinary guy who is overly fascinated by ‘anything Linux’ and ‘anything PHP/MySQL’.

My role involves using a large variety of browsers, especially exploring the Administration Panel (/Dashboard) side. Due to Safari and Internet Explorer, I will have to work on alternative platforms, too. Mac OS X is powerful, but rarely has the ‘expessivability’ of GNU/Linux. Also, it has commercial strings attached to it. Many of its applications bear a cost. To test cross-Web browser compatibility, I can disengage from the 3 Linux that I regularly use and take advantage of the iMac and Windows XP machines at the office. These operating system definitely have a place; just not in my house [smile]! They have not been switched on for months, but now there is a reason for a small change. I love WordPress! As matter of face, it was love at first sight and the affair carries on.

I have reported a few bugs already and some have been resolved:

• Published Articles for Future Appearance Get Counted in Categories
• Unbalanced quotes break RTE structure
• Opera Uploads iFrame Issue
• Char Encoding in inline-uploading.php

T was only a few days ago that I came to ponder an interesting fact: I have never,ever in my life paid for a piece of software. I have never paid for a Web service either. I had some computer games bought for me as a gift while I was a teenager, or even younger than that. I was primary using freeware as a child and I do not think it ended up quite so miserably, despite my habit of relying on free and/or Open Source solutions.

The are a few exceptions to the above statement. Admittedly, I may have bought computers that had Windows pre-installed and thus a licence paid for. Anything commercial that I ever use nowadays, the University pays for (MATLAB which runs on Linux, for example). My Web host pays for cPanel too, I presume. Palm handhelds which I have owned have some programs bundled, but I never purchased any softwere for this platform where so much is already free.

Is it all something to take pride in? I do not believe so, but the observation is an interesting one nonetheless. Frankly, I can never recall pulling out a credit card for software purchase or a paid service on Web. On the Internet, if I ever pull out the CC numbers, it is for groceries, various items (primarily gadgets) and Web hosting bills. Never have I paid for a licence key or a binary file.

Bottom line: expensive proprietary software is not a necessity. That, however, is not what commercial software vendors would have you believe. Freeware and Open Source software are their greatest enemies and, given experience and orientation, they can achieve anything. They also have the merit of being transferable and readily available in abundant numbers.

Decisions and announcements that makes me as happy
as a child (photo from around 1986)

UR paper which was submitted to ISBI 2006 has just been accepted, so I will be going to America in April. In March I will know if another paper of ours (CVPR 2006) has been accepted. The content of this paper is similar to the one contained in a recent presentation.

I mentioned both submissions in the past in the context of deadline pressure. I will most likely take advantage of this journey across the Atlantic and visit some of my family in Florida. This will make up for the pressure I am constantly subjected to (as well as — in this case — presenting in an international conference).

My relatives seem to anticipate my visit and, quite frankly, so do I! The deadline for another submission is drawling nearer, so we must take it up a gear and invest more time in experimentation and writing. The trips abroad will give me a significant motivational boost.