Josef “Jeff” Sipek

So, today for a reason unknown to me, I decided to visit the US Department of Homeland Security. I was greeted by a spew of data. From the first two bytes I recognized the fileformat to be a bitmap image. I couldn’t help myself, but to extract the data and save it in a separate file. No matter what I did, I couldn’t extract more information from the file than this (I converted the bitmap to a PNG for easier viewing in web browsers):

I am not certain what happened, but regarless it just seems too enjoyable to not write about. :) So, just let your imagination loose and enjoy. (If they fixed their site already, here’s a link to a screenshot)

Jeff Garzik just posted “State of the Union — Wireless” to the linux-kernel mailing list. It all ends with:

So… there it is. We suck. There’s hope. No Luke Skywalker in sight. I hope we can avoid being slaves to fashion, by merging a rewrite, but that way be the way to go.

I found a great link, where someone built a Portable Rotary Cellular Phone. I have to say, I’d love to have one — just walk into a room, put the phone down onto the table, and just let it sit…until someone calls. :)

I installed Apache 2 on my desktop, the config is very nicely split up (this is supposedly Debian maintainer’s work - thanks). I had an issue with some PHP scripts, and therefore just stopped Apache 2 and went back to 1.3. I’m going to take a stab at it soon.

Also, I noticed that there is Apache 2.1 (alpha) link on Apache’s website. It is supposed to have some nice features. We’ll see.

So, here I was - resting after new years (PF 2006) when I decided to watch some Star Trek. Since I have a considerable backlog of episodes to watch I resumed where I left of last week… Star Trek: The Original Series, Season 2 Episode 14. In this episode, Kirk, et. al. goes down to a planet that seems to have had a history similar to that of Earth. The major difference was, the Roman Empire did not fall. So, the away team finds themselves on a planet with Roman values but mid 20th century technology. Well, at approximately 17 minutes into the episode, there are a bunch of shots of Roman buildings. At 17:27 in, there is this one:

When I saw that, I went: “Whoa! Is that….?” I couldn’t help but resist pausing and googling to make sure my suspicion was correct. And it turns out it was.

What exactly did I think when I saw the frame above? “Whoa! Is that Building 10 at MIT?” Yep. I knew the name or rather number of the building. (I blame the fact that I applied there as a freshman.) Here’s a photo I found on google that is from not too long ago:

And here is a link to the original of the above image. In the larger version you can clearly see the “MASSACHVSETTS INSTITVT OF TECHNOLOGY” and the year “MCMXVI.”

I think the reasons the producers chose the MIT shot were:

• Not everyone knows what it looks like, compared to say many of the Roman-like architecture buildings in Washington, DC.
• (Possibly) Star Trek does tend to be watched by more technologically oriented people. And it adds the episode a nice touch to show one of the major technology universities

Overall, it was a nice episode.

So, newyears consisted of working on a simple HTTP proxy-like script (in Python) until 23:56 when I got called downstairs to watch the NYC ball drop thing on TV. The ball dropped, just like every year, and there was much rejoicing. 0:01 I said that I’ll be upstairs coding some more. :-)

Except those 5 minutes, a typical midnight.