thomasng [dot] net » Computers / Electronics

CSS needs a bit of fixin

ng.thomas — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 10:56:19 +0000

Just reading through my old posts and noticed that the spacing between paragraphs is insufficient — especially when an emoticon is placed in there. That will be fixed… soon. (e.g. whenever i get around to it )

I don’t use this blog enough, but I really should use this more. Writing is one damn good way to express one’s self and get lost in a world that I call my own.

Update 11/22/2009: Changed the paragraph properties around. Reduced the font size to 1.0em-dash and increased the vertical spacing between paragraphs to 5px. This should help with some of the readability issues. (But since it also decreases the size of the font, some of you may need to put ‘em reading glasses on.

p{font-size:1.0em;padding:5px;}

Blog neglect!!!

ng.thomas — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:10:36 +0000

I bought this domain name back in 2004 with the intention of writing updates and what not. Not really doing a good job of that as of late. If you’ve visited this site recently, you may have noticed the insane number of cycling ride postings and not much more than that.

With Facebook and Instant Messaging being so popular (and Twitter as of 10 hours ago), most of my thoughts or quick status updates are already in other electronic form. Something has to be done! Must set aside time to write here and have it auto-magically distribute itself to the other electronic channels via a bunch of plug-ins to this WordPress blog!

-T

Follow me on twitter

ng.thomas — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:01:30 +0000

After months of rebellion, I caved in to the Twitter madness. You can follow me at http://twitter.com/ngth82

Eh… what’s up doc? Google speaks like Elmer Fudd

Thomas — Tue, 26 May 2009 05:30:04 +0000

Apparently you can change the Google language settings to interesting things like Elmer Fudd…and even l337 speak!

Google maps

Thomas — Tue, 26 May 2009 04:41:10 +0000

Just showed the parents Google Maps… they thought it was the coolest thing! My mom used to be a map maker, drawing the topographic maps, so that was pretty exciting to see for her. My dad tried to find his old neighborhood… but with little success between me not knowing how to read Chinese, and my dad not knowing exactly where it is anymore since all of the reference points changed. We shall try again next time!

Facebook Albums now online with Fotobook plugin

Thomas — Wed, 20 May 2009 07:47:06 +0000

I installed the Fotobook and Lightbox 2 plugins this evening to enable some level of integration between my Facebook albums and my blog. Now people without Facebook accounts can check out some photos. The Fotobook plugin allows some level of privacy by allowing you to control which albums you want to show. Pretty neat. Check out the “Photos” link above.

Test post from thomasng.net

Thomas — Wed, 20 May 2009 04:35:36 +0000

This is a test cross-post from thomasng.net to Facebook

Best Buy, you FAIL

Thomas — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 15:35:58 +0000

Dec 24th, 2008 9:48AM – received BestBuy password reset request in my e-mail inbox.
Dec 24th, 2008 10:03AM – received BestBuy purchase confirmation in my e-mail inbox for $156.74.

The problem? I was asleep and didn’t make this order! Sometime between 9:48AM and 10:03AM a Thomas Ng in Beaverton purchased a Sony Cybershot 8.1 MP camera over the phone and had it shipped to a Gabrielle Ng in Portland. I’m assuming that the Thomas in Beaverton waited a while for their password reset request to come to his e-mail inbox, and when it didn’t, he called up BestBuy for a phone order. So a BestBuy representative handled the phone order and changed MY account information and overwrote it with THEIR account information. The billing address, shipping address and even the credit card information was changed out this morning.

Okay, so if a customer calls and tries to place an order over the phone and also says that all of their billing information was different, wouldn’t the customer service guy get a little suspicious and deny the order?

Lucky for me, the order was billed to their Master Card, so I didn’t loose any money. I wonder how many other people this has happened to? Now that I have their CC information, what prevents me from racking up a bunch of purchases under their name? This is a huge security hole.

Best Buy, you FAIL.

Cost of text messaging vs E-mail.

Thomas — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 00:52:10 +0000

So I just got a text messaging plan after having a cell phone for the last 8 years. Being nerdy, I calculated the cost of texting vs just using internet e-mail. Let’s assume that there is no protocol overhead for e-mailing or texting and that what you only send is pure text.

My Comcast bill is approximately $55/month. Comcast recently announced that one can use a total aggregate bandwidth of 250GB per month before reaching their monthly limit. At this rate, the price per character is $2.05 x 10^-10 (that’s $2.05 billionth of a dollar per *character*… a very very small number.)

The math:
($55.00 month / 250GB) * (1GB / 2^30 bytes) = $0.000000000205 / byte.
(1 byte = one 8-bit ASCII character – e.g. A-Z, 0-9 and punctuation)

On the other hand, my text messaging service costs $5.00 / month. You get 400 *total* text messages, with 140 characters each. Lets assume that every text message that you send and receive is 140 characters long… even though the average text message is much shorter. At this rate, the price per character is $0.0000893.

The math:
($5.00 month / 400 messages) * (1 message / 140 bytes) = $0.0000893 / byte.
(1 byte = one 8-bit ASCII character – e.g. A-Z, 0-9 and punctuation)

So, if Comcast charges the same amount as your phone carrier for the same amount of service, it would cost you $23,971,286 per month.

The math:
($0.0000893 / byte) * (1 byte / [1/2^30] GB) * 250GB = $23,971,286.

Yes … almost $24 MILLION dollars a month.

asdf

Thomas — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 03:27:19 +0000

I’ve owned this domain name since August 2004, and a blog since 2001, and since then, I’ve gone through 7 site re-designs and countless hours of blogging. All of the entry archives were kept on this site just for historical fun, but after 8 years it’s time to move on, and start from a clean slate.

I’m just using the default template for the time being, but I intend to make my own template photo friendly… I just need to find the time.

If you read this often, the last entry that i wrote was way back in October of 2007 after the LiveSTRONG ride. Since then, this blog has remained dormant and abandoned. Work consumed most of my time, and well, I just don’t like to sit in front of the computer after the work day is over. If it’s nice outside, I’ll go cycling, if it’s storming on the mountain, it’s snowboarding time. If I just want to get away, I drive in to Portland and hang out with my friends.

We’ll see where 2008 takes me. Maybe this site will sit idle, but who knows.