http://blog.sparkymat.net Tue, 18 Nov 2008 07:00:53 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I have started a programming blog here. http://blog.sparkymat.net/2008/11/programming-blog/ [caption id="attachment_188" align="aligncenter" width="200" caption="the german"][/caption] Profile Name: Unknown Alias: The German Power: Manipulation of magnetic fields Overview Little is known about the German. He first catches the attention of the Company when he commits a string of bank robberies, most of them using brute forces, including ripping off the vault doors. Later, after escaping from ... http://blog.sparkymat.net/2008/11/heroes-vs-marvels-the-german/ [caption id="attachment_175" align="aligncenter" width="200" caption="knox"][/caption] Profile Name: Benjamin Washington Alias: Knox Power: Enhanced strength (fuelled by fear in those around him) Overview Knox is portrayed as a sadistic criminal. He seems to have turned to the wrong side of the law quite early in his youth. He is seen working as part of an organized syndicate, ... http://blog.sparkymat.net/2008/11/heroes-vs-marvels-knox/ Recently came across this post, which pitted the various Heroes characters against their X-Men counterparts. Personally, I feel most of it was not true or accurate. Hence, I am going to attempt to re-match them based on my knowledge of the respective mythologies. Also, "X-men" doesn't include the villains and ... http://blog.sparkymat.net/2008/11/heroes-vs-marvels/ Ubuntu continues to amaze me!! Trying the RC for the Intrepid Ibex. I don't know if its just me, but I think there is a significant speed boost. Everything feels faster and smoother. The user experience has improved quite nicely. Screenshots below (note: I am using the Dust2 theme from ... http://blog.sparkymat.net/2008/10/ubuntu-intrepid-ibex-810/ I have bid farewell to Dreamhost. After 2 long years of association with one of the most popular (??) shared hosting providers, I am moving on to bigger things (read VPS). I have now allied myself to linode.com :-) http://blog.sparkymat.net/2008/10/dreams-no-more/ I finally have my "ideal" mail system up and running. Everything goes into a "wait" queue which is cleared on a regular basis. Only white-listed mails are moved to my Inbox. Bye-bye spam! Of course, I need to review mails in the queue periodically to make sure I am not about to ... http://blog.sparkymat.net/2008/10/dream-mail-system/ Some screenshots of my current Debian desktop [Click on the thumbnail to see them full-sized] http://blog.sparkymat.net/2008/09/debian-desktop-screenshots/ I have a fairly powerful machine. A 3-GHz C2Duo (45nm) processor. 4 gigabytes of DDR2 800MHz RAM. An FSB of 1333MHz. SATA chugging at 3GBps. A Geforce 9600GT with the latest (beta) driver installed. Yet, it takes 62 seconds for my Ubuntu installation to load up. And don't get me ... http://blog.sparkymat.net/2008/09/the-need-for-speed/ A couple of days back, Google Chrome was launched. The Firefox crowd scratched their heads and muttered 'What the hell?!', the Opera crowd sighed and the IE crowd pretended they didn't notice. Apart from the usual Google trumpet-blowing, what caught my atttention was benchmarks that claimed that it was faster ... http://blog.sparkymat.net/2008/09/an-obligatory-post-on-chrome/