ctrl.altered.mind

A fire broke into an older brick building housing the popular Maxwell’s American Cafe in Downtown Minneapolis on Wednesday, causing some serious damage with the flames causing the roof to partially collapse.

Firefighting efforts were compounded by sub-zero temperatures that day as the sprayed water instantly frosted the building and surrounding structures, casting a frosty and fascinating mantle over the landscape.

Flickr user Tony Webster has some fascinating images captured at the scene, such as this one (cannot post the image here as all rights are reserved by the photographer).

See the complete photoset here (29 pictures), or view as a slideshow.

Raj Thackeray has the achieved the (dubious) distinction of scoring a place in the In The News section on Google News. I can’t believe that such buffoonery is being tolerated by the people of Mumbai and Maharashtra.

A comic by Ted Rall appeared on Yahoo! this week, referring to a hypothetical Mike Huckabee in the garb of a Hindu fundamentalist. I thought it was pretty amusing.

The comic also sparked a bit of debate on reddit, but I hope most people realized that the cartoon aimed to point out the way fundamentalism of any kind virtually falls apart if taken literally. Unfortunately (in my humble opinion, of course), this wisdom is not demonstrated through the results of the Iowa caucus.

(Update) As this page just got linked, I thought I would explicitly add my perspective on the subject instead of leaving it (my opinion) open to interpretation. One has to understand that it has been targeted at the so called ‘ignorant’ American whose knowledge of Hinduism is probably derived from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It is easy to see the rhetoric in this cartoon, as the concepts outlined are pretty bizarre in a scientific context. It would easily make a person of any religion see the sarcasm, especially how misguided religious fundamentalists in the West (as with any other part of the world) are.

I’ve only been hit by one meme in the past, but that has not stopped me from wondering about things that matter the most to me when I happen to chance upon memes on the interwebs. It also makes me realize the lameness coefficient of my own blog (sigh). Oh well, now that I have an incoming meme, here are the ‘Top Ten Most Awesome Things That Happened On This Blog’* (in no particular order) -

I went through the task of setting up a UPnP home media server involving a Mac and a PS3

I was amused by the fact that the fastest personal computer to run Windows Vista is a Mac

I discovered xkcd and then chugged through the entire comics archive - and in the process discovered a talk at Google by Randall Munroe, and his ball pit couch

I wrote about recovering hidden disk space on the Mac

I publicly professed my infatuation with all things Audi

I got myself a sportsbike!**

I responded to my first meme

I discovered that Shift Happens

I made fun of Windows (especially Vista)

I wrote a tiny Mac application (based on Automator) that concatenates multiple pdf documents into a single file

Well, that got done quickly. At first I thought I was going to have a really hard time coming up with ten things to list here. Now for phase two of the meme - distribution. Tags go out to Mike, Murali, Rohit, and Sean.

Wishing you all a happy and prosperous new year! See you all in 2008.

* Your Mileage May Vary

** In terms of awesomeness, this one trumps the rest by an immeasurable margin

A long, long time ago, I tacked on some OpenID support to my blog by enabling the WPOpenID plugin (developed by Alan J Castonguay and Hans Granqvist) without testing it. After some gentle prodding from spl (who is probably the only visitor to my blog using OpenID :P), I have now finally had the chance to complete this project. OpenID support is now up and functional. Thanks Sean!

The plugin is designed to work with a standard wordpress installation, but kept failing for me because my site is restructured to live outside the conventional /wordpress directory structure. I had to update the permalinks translation at a few points within the plugin code, but it seems to be running fine now. I was able to test this by registering for a free OpenID account (with MyOpenID).

So what really is OpenID? It is essentially an easy-to-use form of online identity. Just like an email address, you can simply use a web address (or URL) that communicates your login information behind-the-scene to a blog or website that accepts OpenID, thus eliminating the need to create and maintain numerous user accounts for each of these sites. Click here to learn more about OpenID.

…especially with the current context of the US dollar falling to equal 93 cents Canadian, lowest since the Civil War.

“There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred billion. It’s less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.”

- Richard Feynman

Each year, Seagate sends 250 employees from its operations around the world, into the wild to face raging rivers, 80-foot gorges, and miles of unforgiving mountain terrain - all as a part of a really unique team building exercise. One of the most challenging events that most people can expect themselves to embark upon, Eco Seagate is an annual morale-athon adventure that also serves to offset office ranks and egos. Grueling training that builds employees for leadership roles with a true test of teamwork - with miles of cross-country mountain biking, white water rafting, and rappelling.

This year’s Eco Seagate Challenge, in Queenstown, New Zealand, had some extra coverage for people who couldn’t make the selection (by random drawing), through the experiences of three volunteering video bloggers. The videos have been added on YouTube in a 3-part series. Watching them just makes me hope to make it to Eco Seagate next year (fingers crossed!).

This delectable jungle safari theme cake caught my attention in a baking specialty store the other day, and I quickly snapped a picture. It just looks too adorable to eat. I especially liked the use of pretzel sticks as tree trunks.

(click for bigger image)

The US Government has been planning a redesign of their currency bills, and in doing so, looks to move away from the monochrome format that has been the inspiration for the colloquial synonymity between the color green and money (the world over). Changes were first implemented in 2003, with pastel colors appearing on the $10, $20 and $50 bills. However, the $5 bill is going to see a much more significant makeover - with splashes of purple and gray to liven it up.

US currency notes have had a long standing dubious distinction of using the same size and color schemes regardless of value, and I’m sure many a tourist has been confused between a ‘smackeroo‘ and a ‘Benjamin‘.

The confusion has not been relegated to tourists alone, for confusion is the primary factor that the redesign is looking to eliminate.

“We wanted this redesigned bill to scream, ‘I am a five. I am a five,”‘ Larry Felix, director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We wanted to eliminate any similarity or confusion on the part of the public between the $5 bill and the $100 bill.”

Of course, the design will also be incorporating additional state-of-the-art security features, giving counterfeiters a run for their money (sorry, couldn’t resist).

The next bill to get a makeover will be the $100. It will feature the most advanced safeguard yet, a new security thread composed of 650,000 tiny lenses that will magnify micro-printing on the bills to give the effect of having the images move in the opposite direction than the bill is being moved.

Ooh, that would be similar to the wheel caps on those newer Mercedes coupes, which appear to turn clockwise while the car is in motion.

I happened to notice that the category links in the sidebar alongside have not been working. Thanks to Google Analytics, I know at least a few people have tried clicking on those links recently, and therefore fixing it quickly was obligatory.

The problem exists at some level within Wordpress’ handling of URIs with custom themes. The permalinks structure, when set to the Date/Time format (where the addresses of posts use the ../MM/DD/.. format), has not been working with my current theme. Reverting to the ‘Default’ permalinks structure (under Wordpress Options > Permalink) seems to resolve the problem. I’d really like to use the date/time format, however, so if I find a better fix for this I’ll be reverting to the previous format (although highly unlikely given this blog’s viewership, that should correct any links that people might have linked to).