Life of PI

Yesterday I went to Queens cinema to see Life of PI. For last few years I saw few people reading the book on the train. The movie was in 3D and I like it very much. I like the plot and quality of the movie. It was good choice overall. 

Note: I also learned that the fastest train from Queens to Brooklyn is E train (express to Manhattan)

The Sun Virtual Tour

Here is interesting presentation about "The Sun Virtual Tour"

Update Drupal

drush en update # Enable Drupal update module

drupal up # Update Drupal Core

drupal pm-update # Update drupal modules

drush status # Get Drupal status

Italy vacation 2012

I had not been in real vacation for last 3 years .  On October 22, 2012 I went to Italy for 10 days (actually 12 days due to Sandy). The whether for the vacation was great and I very much enjoyed the vacation:

For 10 days I visited the following cities:
- Milan
- Bergamo
- Verona
- Venice (best place in Italy)
- Florence
- Pisa
- Pompey
- Napoli
- Siena
- Rome
- Vatican

E-mail Anonymous

Interesting link how to set e-mail anonymously:
 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/11/tutorial-how-create-anonymous-email-accounts

November, 2012

I did not make any posts recently due to my trip to Italy and Sandy (hurricane). In next few days I would write few updates related to these two events.

VIM Presentation

Here is link on excellent presentation about VIM - Click Here

Spell Corrector

Here is good link for Spell Corrector

Stewart Brand: 4 environmental 'heresies'

Hans Rosling: The magic washing machine

Dictionary set 1 (19 words)

1). Bedridden - Confined to bed by sickness or old age (adjective)
Example: I want to address it now before it becomes a real problem and you have to be bedridden for 2 months

2). Isomorphic - (biology) similarity or identity of form or shape or structure

3). Anhedonia - is the technical name for a diminished ability to experience satisfaction and pleasure.

4). ROFL -  is an internet accronmym for Rolling On Floor Laughing

5). Logograms - meaning that one written sign stands for a whole word.

6). Feral - organism os one that has changed from being domesticated to being wild or untamed.
Example: Many of whom went feral and wild because they had no natural predator.

7). Piety - The quality of being religions or reverent

8). Sediment - Matter that settles to the bottom of a liquid; dregs

9). Homage - Special honor or respect shown publicly

10). Mere  - This is solely or no more or better than what is specified

11). Obscure - Not discovered or known about; uncertain
Example: Da Gama's origins are obscure

12). Diffuse - Spread or cause to spread over a wide area or among a large number of people.
Example: Most of the people in Columbia lived in diffuse villages.

13). Figment - A thing that someone believes to be real but that exists only in their imagination.
Example: It's a figment that he is using to evoke something that happening around the world

14). Advent - The arrival of a notable person, thing or event.

15).  Predicament - A difficult, unpleasant, or embarrassing situation.

16). Conjecture - An opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information.
Example: I would agree with Mike's conjecture

17). Hinterland - The often uncharted areas beyond a coastal district or a river's banks.

18). Omission -  Someone or something that has been left out or excluding

19). Heuristic - Enabling a person to discover or learn something for themselves.

List of Freely Available Books

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-available-programming-books

The TTY demystified

There is great article about TTY - The TTY demystified

MYSQL: remove duplicates from table

Here is one line to remove duplicate records from database. I just run similar query for 6M records.

ALTER IGNORE TABLE mytable ADD UNIQUE INDEX(user_id,name);

TED: Hans Rosling: Global population growth, box by box

The Little Book of Semaphores

The Little Book of Semaphores

The Physics of Spin: Sputnik Politics and American Physicists in the 1950s

Here is good article by MIT historian David Kaiser - http://web.mit.edu/dikaiser/www/Kaiser.PhysSpin.pdf

What happens to stolen bicycles?

Where interesting article about what happened with stolen bicycles. Apparently bike thievery is essential a risk-free crime.
Click here on the link - What happens to stolen bicycles

Free Python Books

Best Open Python Books - Free Python Books

Convivium Osteria

Convivium Osteria is comfortable restaurant located in Downtown Brooklyn.  Recommend It!

NYC Budget

 Here is link to  - NYC Budget

SeeThroughNY

NYC agencies are corrupt. Here is good website to monitor spending in NYC (and state).

SeeThroughNY

The Divided Brain

BSD vs. Linux

BSD vs. LINUX

No Excluse List

Noexcuselist.com - excellent resource to learn free onlinel

GPS

Interesting video about GPS. GPS signal is not encrypted and current location error is up to 2 meters in radius. However, the error in new devices is measured in centimeters or millimeters.

Interesting links about the topic:

Wave Bubble - disrupt GPS signal

GPS spoofer - fake signal

Wave Bubble and GPS spoofer are dangerous for our society.

ifconfig.me

In the past, I used www.whatismyip.com external IP address. Today I stumble on better service www.ifconfig.me that suport JSON, XML, less ads and more.

- curl ifconfig.me/all.json
- curl ifconfig.me/all.xml

curl ipecho.net/plain ; echo

Just because something isn't happening for you right now doesn't mean that it will never happen.

google-refine

google-refine is desktop application for data manipulation.  Click here for more information

Visotskiy: Antisemits

Floyd Bennet Field - NYC only public campground.

I live few miles away from Floyd Bennet Field and ride bicycle there often. Here is another great article  by Nathan Kissinger - Camping at Floyd Bennet Field

Visotskiy: Я рос как вся дворовая шпана..

SHOW ENGINE INNODB STATUS

Very useful command for SHOW ENGINE INNODB STATUS

seq - print a sequence of numbers

Linux utility to generate sequence of numbers

seq 1 5
1
2
3
4
5

PBS: Secrets of the Sun

Watch Secrets of the Sun on PBS. See more from NOVA.

The Great Santini by Pat Conroy

Great book by Pat Conroy. Easy to read and interesting.  The book is about military family after the second world war in south. The book is available from Brooklyn Public library. For more information about the book click here

Quote about nation

Every nation, no matter how well intentioned it was at its inception, will become a tyranny through the fear, apathy and stupidity of it's citizens.

Quote - by Mark Twain

"Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience" ~ Mark Twain

true, true...

wget & cookies

-- Get cookie
wget -q --cookies=on --keep-session-cookies --save-cookies=cookie.txt http://www.example.com"

-- Get content of the page
wget -qO output.log --referer=http://www.example.com --cookies=on --load-cookies=cookie.txt --keep-session-cookies --save-cookies=cookie.txt http://www.page2scrap.com"

Shuttle on the boat

Bach Organ Works (free music)

If you like classical music, here is link to Bach Organ Works (by James Kibbie)
Free Bach music

Terry Moore: Why is 'x' the unknown?

HOUSE M.D.

HOUSE M.D is my favorite show for last few years aired last episode on May 21, 2012.
Last Season (8th)  is mediocre compare to previos episodes including Everybody Dies last episode.
I do actually last song in the film Enjoy Yourself (It's Later Than you Think) by Louis Prima. I found the song on Spotify and listed dozen times today... I ENJOY the song :)

egalitarian (word)

Egalitarian - Affirming, promoting, or characterized by belief in equal political, economic, social, and civil rights for all people.

(Example: egalitarian society)

HTTP (Patch)

New method has been added to HTTP - PATCH (modify existing resource)
Click here for more information about PATCH

Largest tables on MySQL Server

Query below to find out table size. Here is original article by Peter Zaitsev Click Here

SELECT
  CONCAT(table_schema, '.', table_name),
  CONCAT(ROUND(table_rows / 1000000, 2), 'M')  AS rows,      
  CONCAT(ROUND(data_length / ( 1024 * 1024 * 1024 ), 2), 'G') AS data,          
CONCAT(ROUND(index_length / ( 1024 * 1024 * 1024 ), 2), 'G') AS idx,
 CONCAT(ROUND(( data_length + index_length ) / ( 1024 * 1024 * 1024 ), 2), 'G') AS total_size,         ROUND(index_length / data_length, 2)  AS idxfrac
FROM  
information_schema.TABLES ORDER  BY data_length + index_length DESC LIMIT  10;

Leon The Pig Farmer

I have not watch good movie for a while. Last Sunday watch "The Dictator" - the movie ok.

Leon The Pig Farmer is independent movie and is very funny.

Here is link to watch - Leon The Pig Farmer

The movie was produced in England in 1992.

Ship Fleet

Yesterday, I witnessed 21 U.S and coalition pass thorough Hudson (Manhattan) in this year's celebration for Memorial weekend. Pictures taken from my Iphone 4

·         Fireboat Harvey

·         Juan Sebastian De Elcano (Spain)

·         KRI Dewaruci  (Indonesia)

·         La Belle Poule (France)

·         Etoile  (France)

·         Cisne Branco  (Brazil)

·         Buque Escuela Arm Cuauhtemoc  (Mexico)

·         ARC Gloria (Columbia)

·         BAE Guyas (Ecuador)

·         USCGC Eagle (WIX 327)

·         USS Roosevelt (DDG 80)

·         USS Mitscher (DDG 57)

·         HMCS Iroquois (Canada)

·         USS Gonzalez (DDG 66)

·         JS Shirane (Japan)

·         USCGC Seneca (WMCE 906)

·         USS San Jacinto (CG 56)

·         FNS Pohjanmaa (Finland)

·         USS Donald Cook (DDG 75)

·         RFA Argus (United Kingdom)

·         USMMA T/V Liberator

·         USCGC Willow (WLB 202)

·         USS Wasp (LPD 1)

Axel (command line download accelerator)

Install:
# Mac
sudo port install axel

# Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install axel

Simultaneous Connections:
axel -n 3 http://downloadn.com/song.mp3

The -n 3 option (simultaneous connections when downoading the file) 

(-a option to show progress)



Axel is tool that can replace wget or curl

Successful Launch Kicks off SpaceX’s Historic Mission

I just received email from SpaceX - "Hawthorne, CA – Today, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon spacecraft to orbit in an exciting start to the mission that will make SpaceX the first commercial company in history to attempt to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station – something only a handful of governments have ever accomplished...."

It's historical event, just few weeks ago I witness Shuttle last fly over NYC.

See picture below:

Last Shuttle Fly over NYC

I just witnessed last shuttle fly.

Dating in the Dark

On Monday April 23 I went to Dating in the Dark event that was organized by RAJE. The event took place at 6 m South Street Seaport (11 Fulton Street). It was interesting experience - "walking in the city in dark". I got feeling what is like to be blind. Our society should provide more respect and help to blind people. After the event we went to bar and had interesting conversation.

Boston vs. Capital (NHL playoff series 2012)

I used to watch hockey (World Cup, Olympic Games) but did not follow the sport for about 10 years. Last few years I was following Washington Capitals in playoffs. They have good team in last few years but experienced bad luck in playoffs.

This year the had not a very good season but played well in first round - eliminating current Stanley Cups holders (Boston Bruins).

Both team played great hockey and I enjoyed every game of the series.

Go Capitals!

Udacity CS101

I just received first Udacity certificate with high distinction (Building Search Engine).

Drupal Services module

Lunch & Learn

I just have 1 hour Lunch & Learn presentation at work. I talked about Python. The presentation went well.

Display and replace invisible characters in VIM

set list
setlocal display=uhex
tr -d '\000' < file_in.py > file_out.py

Install Screen on RHEL 5.5

1. Download RPM from
  http://www.rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=screen
2. wget ftp://195.220.108.108/linux/centos/5.8/os/x86_64/CentOS/screen-4.0.3-4.el5.x86_64.rpm
3. rpm -ivh screen-4.0.3-4.el5.x86_64.rpm

Screen Tutorial

Upgrade to Python 2.5.6 on RHEL 5.5

Here are upgrade instructions for Python 2.4 to Python 2.5.6:
1. http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.5.6/Python-2.5.6.tgz
2. tar xzf Python-2.5.6.tgz
3. cd Python-2.5
4. ./configure
5. $ make
6. sudo make altinstall
7. sudo mv /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/python_old_2.4
8. sudo ln -s  /usr/local/bin/python2.5 /usr/bin/python

Validate:
# python -V
Python 2.5.6

Change password on Drupal 7

drush upwd myname --password=new_password

InnoDB Performance Tuning

InnoDB becomes the default storage starting from MySQL 5.5. InnoDB is a transaction, ACID complaint MySQL storage engine (including commit, rollback and crash recovery capabilities, and offers row level locking.

I worked on data migration of millions records from Vignette VCM to Drupal 6. Drupal migrate module is not stable and does not perform well on large data sets. So I rewrote migration using raw SQL queries and modify my.cnf settings. Here some useful settings:

innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit=1 
Set to 1 if database transaction is more important than performance. Set to 2 if performance is more important than transaction.

innodb_log_file_size=1024M 
Set the log file size to about 25% of the buffer pool size.

innodb_file_per_table 
Increase performance in optimize, backup, restore, compress and truncating a table

innodb_buffer_pool_size=4G 
Default is 128M. 70-80% of memory for dedicated 64bit MySQL server.

Disable AUTOCOMMIT
When you need to INSERT lots of data, first call SET AUTOCOMMIT = 0;then execute INSERT statements followung by a manual COMMIT;


Useful Links:
InnoDB Performance Tuning

Recommended my.cnf Settings for InnoDB

The Five W's of Life

Who - you are is what makes you special. Do not change for anyone
What - lies ahead will always be a mystery. Do not be afraid to explore
When - life pushes you over, you push back harder
Where - there are choices to make, make the one you wont regret
Why - things happend will never be certain. Take it in stride and move forward

Memoization

Memoization is a way to make code run faster by saving
previously computed results. Instead of needing to recompute the value of an
expression, a memoized computation first looks for the value in a cache of pre-
computed values. (caching)

Mathematics for Computer Science

I recommend free online reference:
Mathematics for Computer Science

Bandwith Meter

Here is link for CNET bandwith meter Bandwidth Meter Online Speed Test

restart Drush cron

DELETE FROM variable WHERE name="cron_semaphore";
DELETE FROM variable WHERE name = "cron_last"
drush cc all

Screenlap - share screen instantly

Easy way to share screen. Excellent web application.
Screenlap

od (dumps a file in different numerous system )

od - command dumps a file in octal, decimal, and other formats.

Useful Links:
http://linux.101hacks.com/unix/od-command-examples/
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/1326?page=0,0

pushd and popd

pushd saves the current working directory in memory.
popd returns to the path at the top of the directory stack.

Example
[sputnik@localhost html]$ pushd . # push current directory to memory
/var/www/html /var/www/html

[sputnik@localhost etc]$ cd /var/games/ # change directory

[mshnaydman@localhost games]$ popd # returns from directory
/var/www/html
[sputnik@imagick-test html]$

For more information, read the Wiki Page

Resize & write data into image

I had task to resize image and add unique identifier. See below handful utilities.

- Exiv2 (manage image metadata. Supports IPTC, Efix, XMP and others formats)
Example: Add the field to IPTC
[sputnik@test_hires] iptc -M"add Iptc.Application2.SpecialInstructions blah blah" myfile.jpg

- Imagemagick (resize, edit, view images or more)
Example: Resize image to 200x200 pixels
[sputnik@test_hires] convert -resize 200x200 myfile_input.jpg myfile_output.jpg

- Identify (image characteristics. is a member of the ImageMagick suite of tools)
Example: Get image size
[sputnik@test_hires] identify -format '%w:%h' $source

- File (determine file type)
Example: Get Filename information. For more 'man file'
file -i $filename | cut -d':' -f 2

Astronomy Lectures

I start getting into Astronomy for last few weeks and find the subject very interested.
Here are 3 lectures by professor David Helfand that I find interesting:

Astronomy Lecture 1: What Is a Star?
Astronomy Lecture 2: Lives of the Stars
Astronomy Lecture 3: Planets Everywhere


There lectures still available in Google Videos.