Cameron Marlow

Typesetting my thesis

I’m at the point where I’m beginning to think about actually writing my Ph.D. thesis, and that means deciding what to write it in. My last experience in this realm was a disaster: with three hours to finish and print my Masters thesis, my sections automagically renumbered themselves, something that took me an hour toContinue reading “Typesetting my thesis”

Hedonic treadmill

I’m just about to return a book to the library, something I read a while back and have been meaning to post about for centuries. In their article “Hedonic Relativism and planning the good society**,” Philip Brickman and Donald Campbell give a name to the ongoing state of happiness that we all experience. Despite theContinue reading “Hedonic treadmill”

Bicycle Defense Fund

An organization has arisen in NYC to help support those individuals arrested during Critical Mass events under the name Freewheels Bicycle Defense Fund. This past weekend they hosted an inaugural fund driving event in Brooklyn that apparently made upwards of $4k for the legal battling bikers. According to my friend Jamie, most, if not allContinue reading “Bicycle Defense Fund”

Laptop Withdrawal Affective Disorder

The symptoms started about two weeks ago when I first noticed that my 12″ Powerbook’s hard drive was on the fritz. My applications slowed down, movies stopped playing halfway through, and I was finding it hard to get out of bed in the morning. Then today when I went into my local Apple store forContinue reading “Laptop Withdrawal Affective Disorder”

OS X keyboard locking issue

I’ve been dealing with this problem with my Powerbook 12″ lately which has been the source of neverending frustration: while using my laptop occassionally the keyboard will stop working. For a while I thought that the only way to cure my ill computer was to reboot it, and with Google providing no help, I wasContinue reading “OS X keyboard locking issue”

Props to Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky

I’m supposed to be eating Tex-mex in Austin right now, reliving old SXSW’s with that group of people I only see this time of year. Instead I’m in a Courtyard Mariott somewhere in Northern Kentucky. Apparently not the part where the bourbon flows freely from spigots one every street corner. But I’m not mad, I’mContinue reading “Props to Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky”

Stopping comment spam with keystrokes

In response to the recent post by Simon Goodway, I threw together a simple implementation of the keystroke-approach to comment spam blocking: MT-Keystrokes It’s quick to install (one small file and one quick change to templates with a comment form). So far I’ve seen a 100% decline in spam, so much so that I’m thinkingContinue reading “Stopping comment spam with keystrokes”

Weblog ping services

Given the sheer number of weblogs that exist, and more importantly the number of those that could be dead, knowing which weblogs have been updated and when is a critical piece of information. The solution to this problem is a notification service, whereby weblogs alert a system when they’ve been changed. Pioneered by weblogs.com, pingContinue reading “Weblog ping services”

Fill My Closet

Over the past few days I’ve received emails from a few friends asking me to sign up for a service called “Fill My Closet,” which appears to be yet another viral marketing campaign. Their proposition is simple: sign up for a free trial from a host of companies, get 5 of your friends to doContinue reading “Fill My Closet”

Google’s AdSense spam

Google has embarked on a pyramid-based incentives program directed at bloggers. They’ve been pushing really hard for me to put AdSense on Blogdex, presumedly because it has high PageRank. I was first contacted directly by someone located in New York under the pretense of a “potential partnership between Google and Blogdex.net.” This was a personalContinue reading “Google’s AdSense spam”