Doctor of Philosophy
Posted by Hans de Ruiter
Yes, I have finally graduated from graduate school with a Ph.D. (i.e., Doctor of Philosophy). In New Zealand, graduate studies are called post-graduate studies (because they occur after graduating with a bachelors university degree), but they are one and the same. This has taken five years from starting in a Masters program at the University of Toronto through to graduating with a doctorate. It is great to finally be finished.
When Life Gets in the Way (Moving)
Posted by Hans de Ruiter
Anyone viewing either the home page, or this blog will probably notice a distinct lack of updates to this website during this month. The simple truth is, I've been really busy. Not only have I been working on a humanoid robot for a colleague, I will also be moving back to New Zealand shortly. As a result, the list of things that had to be done just inflated over time, and this website suffered as a result.
Month in Review - October 2008
Posted by Hans de Ruiter
This month saw a sizable traffic spike due to progress with the RadeonHD project. In particular, the log entry for the first major milestone saw over one-thousand page-views (1043 and counting); that is over half the total number of page views for the entire website in September (1707). The website has also grown to over one hundred pages (107 pages, or 108 including this blog entry). Thus, adding a search feature should probably be made soon, in order to help people locate information.
Technorati vs. Blogged vs. Zimbio - The Verdict
Posted by Hans de Ruiter
Several months have passed since I signed up to Technorati, Blogged, and Zimbio. Of interest was seeing whether these sites could help increase traffic to this website. A week after signing up, I noted that Technorati was the only one to produce any hits. Now, months later, which one was the most effective? Which one is the "winner?" That title goes to Technorati. However, my initial skepticism has also been proven right; even Technorati has failed to produce much more than a handful of visits.
Amiga Workbench on a Radeon X1300
Posted by Hans de Ruiter
The first major milestone in the RadeonHD project has been reached; Amiga Workbench (indeed, any screen) can now be displayed by the RadeonHD driver on Amiga OS 4.x. Dragging of large windows can be sluggish due to lack of hardware graphics acceleration. Despite this, movies are playable, albeit with higher CPU usage. This sluggishness and high CPU usage will disappear once hardware acceleration is implemented.
CopyScape - Combatting Plagiarism
Posted by Hans de Ruiter
Yesterday I discussed the existence of software tools that steal other people's content in order to make money via advertising. In that post, I mentioned that I was tempted to write a bot that would scan for thieves of my content. Well, as I was submitting that post to Digg, I stumbled upon a service that does just that, Copyscape. Whilst checking a complete website costs money, they have a free service that allows checking a single page for plagiarism.
Automated Theft of Copyrighted Content
Posted by Hans de Ruiter
The myriads of websites that give advice on "how to make money online" have a common theme running through them: have lots of quality content on your website that people want to read. So, how does one obtain this large volume of quality content? There are those who have the ability to create/write it themselves. Others have built up their site to the point that they can pay others to write for them. Then there are so-called "community" or "social-networking" that effectively get their users to produce the content themselves. The final option is to steal someone else's content. I have previously noted that there is considerably less original content on the internet than there are websites/pages. Even worse,
Month in Review - September 2008
Posted by Hans de Ruiter
This month spam comments and hacking attempts have become almost continuous. Akismet is doing a fairly good job of filtering out spam. However, a few very objectionable spam comments are still getting through. For now I have simply deleted these, but if it becomes worse, I may have to install Captcha as well. Captcha requires users to enter letters presented in image form, thus making it hard for spam-bots to automatically post spam comments. Silverstripe has a Captcha module available so it should be fairly easy to add.
No, I Did Not Ask You to Install That!
Posted by Hans de Ruiter
Installing Google's new Chrome browser reminded me of something that really irritates me that more and more software installers do; installing things without my permission. It starts with small things. For example, I like keeping my desktop mostly free of icons, so, I do not like installers that think that their software is so good that it deserves a spot on my desktop. A large number of installers put their program icon on the desktop without even asking for permission. Even those that ask, usually have it as the default option.
New Hardware Available for Amiga OS 4.1, Finally (SAM-440)
Posted by Hans de Ruiter
Yes, another Amiga OS 4.x related blog entry. That is because a lot is happening at the moment. In an earlier post, it was mentioned that no hardware that could run Amiga OS 4.x was available for purchase; thus, the shiny new Amiga OS 4.1 was out of reach to everyone but the few (one thousand or so) that already owned Amiga-ones. Well, this hardware drought is finally over. This is now available for purchase with a beta version of Amiga OS 4.1 that will be upgraded to an OEM version once the final version is released.