There is one reason computers are great at numbers and awful at languages: the latter are difficult to parse. While complex mathematical operations can be carried out in a well-known order, parsing text can be exruciating difficult even for humans. This is especially true for languages — such as English — that allow long sequences…
Flickr is the best place to showcase your photography, here’s why
After a long hiatus, a few months ago I started getting into photography again. The question immediately arose: how do I share my work? Making a website from scratch was a no-go: too much work, too little motivation. A CMS, such as Coppermine? Not really, I have used several in the past and they felt…
Printing in grayscale with AirPrint
Did you all think I was dead? Unfortunately for you, I am not. I’ve just been fairly busy with work and with my renewed interest in photography. Speaking of which, all of you should follow my Flickr photostream, which I update daily. So, you’ve got the shiny new iOS 4.2 on your iPhone 4 and…
How to use resizeTo in Safari (if it doesn’t work)
Many people are probably familiar with the fact that most browsers allow Javascript code to be entered in the address field. That’s the magic behind bookmarklets, which simply spare the user the hassle of manually typing long, convoluted and obfuscated Javascript statements. While it’s usually pointless to do so, there is one case in which…
Languages: the strange case of Pirahã and Aymara
In my last post, I wrote about the connections between language and thought, ie. linguistic relativity / determinism. In today’s highly globalized world, languages get mixed and evolve at a much faster pace than ever before. English, for instance, is no longer only divided into British, American, Canadian and Australian English; we could say that there…
Languages: linguistic relativity, words vs. thought
One of the most intriguing concepts in linguistics is the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, or linguistic relativity principle. Simply put, it states that the language we speak can influence the way we think. Another common name for this theory is linguistic determinism. There are some subtleties in the usage of these different names (no pun intended),…
Italian hand gestures explained
This is spot on. You’ll need this if you ever come here. 😀
Manual duplex printing on a laser printer
My laser printer, a Samsung CLX-3175, does not have any tool for automatic duplex printing. Achieving such result manually is not difficult, but may take some trial and error in order to get the settings right. That’s exactly what I’ve done, and I’m writing this post as a note to myself. Should it be useful…
TV shows I’ll be watching
In case anybody cares, here is what I will be watching: Weeds (season 6), Showtime, Mondays — in progress Cougar Town (season 2), ABC, Wednesdays — starting Sept. 22nd The Big Bang Theory (season 4), CBS, Thursdays — starting Sept. 23rd 30 Rock (season 5), NBC, Thursdays — starting Sept. 23rd Of course, if you…
Prettifying URLs with fake subdirectories using mod_rewrite
Lately, I have been trying to define a common basis for most of my web projects, since I often end up reinventing the wheel every time. I have tried a few PHP frameworks, but none of them tickled my fancy, but I have complicated tastes. I am known for reimplementing something from scratch rather than…