T has been a good day at the gym today. A team of dozens of production staff took over the health club for the filming of models. Good-looking women ‘infested’ the place. [smile /]

Previous ‘special guests’ were
Jeff ‘Left hook’ Lacy, a boxing world champion (a fortnight ago), and Justin Timberlake a couple of years. It was just me and him at the gym, but I didn’t recognise him at first. He is unimpressive when faced in person.

My pause/resume demonstrative program

ARLIER this afternoon noticed that my MATLAB profile had gone past the 30,000 count milstone. That count corresponds to the number of downloads of my code and programs over at MATLAB Central. I keep track of these numbers three times a week using HTML syndication. After some hesitance, I thought it was worth raving about; just because I rarely get the chance! [smile /]

Related item: A short write-up on an honourable highest position: first world-wide. This was my greatest moment of excitement, for which my grandfather popped some champagne.

Y site has just returned to Google’s top 50 for “roy”, after I had dropped to oblivion last year. I was never truly trying to get there. I never aimed for the site to be affiliated with the keyword “roy”, but this was a side effect of anchor text (words adject to or within hyperlinks). More oddly, my domain name and front page title make no mentioning of Roy. This, anchor text must matter a great deal; More than many of us realise, that’s for sure.

As another example, take the main developers of WordPress. They are ‘Googlebombing’ themselves in ‘out of the box’ installations of the software Web-wide. Try searching Google for “matt”, “mike”, or “alex”. You will see what I mean.

I occasionally re-think my arrangement of automated backups. Recent reading about somebody else’s backup method inspired me to take better care of backups (yet again). I used to have 40 GB mirrors in 3 separate sites, which seemed beyond sufficient. Nevertheless, last Tuesday I bought a 300GB external hard-drive. Unwrapped, connected to SuSE and voila! New drive appears on Desktop. Linux has become easier than ever before. Almost frustratingly easy as there is no challenge and rarely a need to install any software.

The only downside of this device is the noise level, which is resulted from rotation at 7200 RPM inside relatively small housing. This can become loud and persistent during overnight baskups. Since the noise bothers me, I suppose could rely on earplugs. The internal hard-drive on the actual box probably has greater noise levels than the new external unit. Usually, however, it is idle or asleep, so only noise from the fan is a true factor.

I never lethargically back up my hard-drives, but nightime appears to be a must for backups, owing to (to put negatively — due to) duration. Matters used to be worse if defragging hard-drives, back in the days when I had a Windows laptop in my apartment. It required some overnight maintenance jobs and fortunately no such issues exist with Linux. Backups, on the contrary, become larger and larger (thus taking longer to complete).

All in all, I have 300 vacant gigabytes to fill. But where will I ever find that much pr0n? I kid, I kid. [smile /]

Photo from around 1984

Warning: shameless rave lies below, but it is no lie.

sometimes wonder how my life would have turned out if I had chosen a different career path. I believe I could stick to a particular sport and make a living out of it. Yesterday, the guy at the cashout (a friendly lad) asked me if I was a bodybuilder, making me shy and flattered at the same time. He then began asking for some general guidance and workout tips, while packing the groceries very slowly with the intention of earning time.

More often than before I find myself giving others advice on fitness, diet and exercise (apart from computers). Yet, on many other occasions I sought help from personal trainers with whom I am in good terms and, as a matter of fact, it was my father who got me started with regular exercise over 10 years ago. So, I merely pass on the experience I have absorbed from others.

This year’s fitness competition is coming up and I am already obliged to sign up and participate. I was the winner in all previous contents among this series, which got me in an ecstatic mood.

VER three years ago I started with a personal site, which was quite profession-inclined. I used it for placement of my CV and was pleased to have had something that was beyond a notorious “blog” — a quickly-growing phenomenon at the time. But nowadays almost everyone has a homepage; everyone including my 9-year-old sister. She has a site/section that comprises a few pages. It was in fact updated with her by my side just a week ago.

Returning to the issue at hand, I felt reluctant to add opinionated opinions on a variety of issues without global consent (e.g. politics, software politics, atheism/religion). The ‘blog’ component of the site bridged a certain gap. Also appealing was the professional layout and base structure of a modern CMS, which required little maintenance other than composition (and of course comment spam purging).

The new blog spot had plenty to offer. Suddenly, rants and raves finally have their deserved place; Any opinion fits under a suitable category, even a new one sometimes; There are no limits in terms of scope; Readers are often those whose interests intersect with the author’s; The blog serves as somewhat of a diary. It is also a gateway to my work, research, my family and it neatly organises thoughts and progress chronologically. Any arbitrary thought and idea can somehow fit without any context, so rich site content can rapidly be added. This is not the case with a contextual, hierarchical site that chooses a theme. It is even the case with a single open forum, where the audience congregates due to common interests.

In blogging, anything goes. This may results in frivolous domains (or subdomains) with incoherent content, but as long as the author is happy, who is to object? With blogging emerges a clique of on-line friends and colleagues. It encourages involvement and mutual support. It also helps you help others, not only receive and digest information. The elements of Web 2.0 (Hype alert! Duck down) involvement promotes all of that.

Here’s to another year of joyful blogging!

Related item: “I Searched the Internet and all I Got was this Lousy Blog”

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.