.: Visualize Websites as Graphs

I recently read an interesting article on visualizations.  One visualization that captured my imagination was of the html tags that make up a web page.  Simply go to this website and enter the address of the website that you want to see.  I played around with some of them and saved some of the images here.  Here's a beautiful visualization of the popular site reddit, one of wikipedia and another one of this site.

.: Setting up a portable ftp server

Ever wanted to access a file on your home computer from work?  Or transfer a file too big for email?  Here's an easy way to do so, using software you don't even have to install.  Download the HFS file server from here. Open a port if you are behind a firewall, using instructions from here. Drag & drop files you want to share into the programme and you're ready to share files. If your IP address is 62.31.132.38 and you have opened port 80, you can access the files at http://62.31.132.38:80/ (note the : before 80)

.: building a DSL Virtual Machine on XP

A friend of mine recently introduced me to virtual machines, so of course, I had to build myself one. A quick search led to pages that provided instructions, but of course, they did not work on my machine. Many hours later, I had distilled the information from a variety of sites (credited in the article) and wrote down the instructions I followed step by step. It is not too hard...try it out sometime.

.: rebuilding your Windows machine

I'd finally had it - my machine was taking so long to boot up and shut down, I could take a shower while it was thinking about it. As you use your PC over time, junk accumulates in the registry, strange programmes get added to your run and runonce registry keys and spyware that has evaded your scanners operate with impunity. Here's how I rebuilt my old Windows machine and installed my favorite utilities without destroying my data.

.: embedding video in webpages

Here's an easy way to do it: upload your video (1 GB or less), agree to their terms and conditions and paste the link into your webpage. You may also embed the video directly into your webpage by copying & pasting the generated code for the microlink. Of course, if your host (read googlepages) strips out this code before publishing the page, you are on your own. This works for mp3s and images as well, though I have not tried it as yet.

.: earth without humans

This is an interesting thought experiment on what might happen were humans to just vanish. A couple of things in the article surprised me: Radiation from nuclear reactors would likely have little impact on wildlife (if Chernobyl is any indication). Some genetically modified crops may also not be very competitive in the absence of pesticides and could lose out to native species.

Just thought of something else: it would get really quiet and dark, as all background sound and light due to electric and mechanical devices dissapeared.

.: file hashes

Every so often, I need to determine whether one file is identical to another. Hash Tab [156 KB executable] is a great, unobtrusive utility that lets me do so by comparing file hashes. It creates a tab in the File Properties dialogue (which you get when you right-click a file's icon) in which you can see/compare MD5, SHA-1 or CRC-32 hashes. Best of all, it stays completely out of your way until you need it - no start menu items or desktop shortcuts, and it's license agreement is just one line long!

.: temporary email addresses

How often have you tried to download a file or view an article, only to have the website ask you for a valid email address to "register" (code for spam)? Here is a great solution to this problem. A website called temporaryinbox.com offers you a toolbar (for firefox) that generates a random email account, valid for 6 hours. Use this email address to "register" and check it for the unlock code from the website. When you are done, forget about it: all emails are deleted in 6 hours and the account vanishes. No more spam! (alright, let's get real: a lot less spam).

.: terresterial impact craters

Impact craters are formed when asteroids or comets collide with a planet. Huge amounts of energy can be released as a result, often resulting in uniquely microstructured rocks that could only have been formed under the stupendous temperatures and pressures of such an impact. There is compelling evidence that the extinction of dinosaurs was a byproduct of a collision with an object about 10 km in diameter. The K-T extinction layer marks the boundary below which dinasour fossils abound, and above which there are none. Several beautiful photographs of impact craters on earth and elswhere can be seen here.

.: alkaloids

Alkaloids contain carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and, sometimes, oxygen. Though usually obtained from plants, they may also be found in crustaceans. The structure of common alkaloids (some of which I am addicted to) can easily be found on the web, and I recreated them to teach myself how to use the free version of ChemSketch. Check out the structures here.

.: history of numbers

Numbers have evolved over eons into the familiar ones we use today. This page contains pictures showing how they evolved over time. The figures were scanned from "The Universal History of Numbers - From Prehistory to the Invention of the Computer", by Georges Irfah.

.: buffalo buffalo...

According to Steven Pinker, experimental psychologist and Professor at Harvard University,"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo" is a grammatical English sentance! Think about it for a while, but click here if you give up and want to see the answer.

.: the climate change project

You can donate your unused computer cycles to the Climate Change project. It is a distributed computing project where thousands of computers are harnessed to solve complex problems.

Each computer is given a piece of the puzzle to work on when it's being underused and its results are periodically sent to the project website for analysis. Often, the combined power of these computers exceeds the fastest supercomputers available today. Other distributed computing projects such as Stanford University's Folding@Home, which models protien folding, or Berkeley University's slightly far-fetched SETI@Home, which tries to locate signals from extra-terresterial souces are slowly colonizing desktops around the world.

.: the genographic project

Scientists now believe that humanity arose in Africa and migrated out of there to populate the world over millenia. Though each of us carries a unique DNA sequence, large tracts of our DNA remain nearly intact across generations. Occasional mutations in these tracts become "genetic markers" that establish that a person is descended from a population known to carry that marker. The Genographic Project attempts to track the genetic markes we all carry to track the migrations of populations. Here is my genetic journey and history. To view this, you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader, which you can download here. Remember to uncheck the Adobe Yahoo! Toolbar and the Adobe Photoshop® Album Starter Edition before you download.