RyanKaskel.com

Do you know who Steve Biko is?

Maybe, maybe not.

I first met him in a class on Southern African history taught by one of Tufts University’s greatest assests Jeanne Marie Penvenne. Biko is one of the better known martyr’s of Apartheid, which means “separateness,” which was part of the pathetic official South African state policy. While my historical interests have moved on to early Christianity, where I feel they will stay, given my Mission, I will never forget that man and he is one of my many heroes.

My brother Jonah gave me a book yesterday called The Fiver Percenters: Islam, Hip Hop and the Gods of New York. I am currently enthralled by its author Michael Muhammad Knight’s words. The Five Percenter movement, the Nation of Islam, and other black consciousness movements here in the United States were concurrent with Biko and black consciousness in South Africa and their message, while transmitted in such different ways both sought to empower the black man to his rightful place as a human being like us all.

If you are at all interested in studying the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa, I highly recommend I Write What I Like by Steve Biko and the aforementioned The Five Percenters. Parallel movements coexisting on each side of the Atlantic, in opposite hemispheres present the historian with a challenge. I have not yet researched whether these movements had any sort of firm connections with each other but any books or information would be greatly appreciated.

Here are two tales for the open minded seeker of Knowldege. Peace to the Gods and the Earths.

I Write What I Like by Steve Biko

The Fiver Percenters by Michael Muhammad Knight

In the course of this blog, I have started several projects that are educational in nature. These include:

• Rethinking Witchcraft: Revisionist History from an evolutionary bioligcal perspective – http://ryankaskel.terapad.com/
• Ryan’s Swahili Verb List – http://swahiliverbs.ryankaskel.com/
• RyanKaskel.com Educational Software (my newest project) – http://edusoft.ryankaskel.com/

Please visit these sights. They reveal a lot of my internal beliefs. I am also a natural teacher and these are some of the subjects that interest me most and nothing pleases me more than to share with my peers information, programs, code, etc. If you find that you are interested in joining a project, I would happily accept any offers of help. Please contact me and we will get started immediatley. I am especially looking for contributors to the RyanKaskel.com Educational Software project. If you read the first (and as of now only live page) on the site, you will get a clear picture (I hope!) of what it is exactly I want to accomplish.

Happy Browsing!

I’m in an interesting place in my life right now but unfortunatly it involves the sacrifice of more frequent blog posting. My blog is my most cherished web application and yet I must give up writing often, perhaps only one entry per week. I am maxed out between full time summer school and a full list of clients. I actually enjoy being so busy and like the stage of my life I am in right now. The unforunate side effect of my otherwise successful life right now is doing less of what I love. But I think that this could prove quite advantageous. As I do work for my clients I will surely come across some section of code thast I find interesting or could explain how I implemented this or that. Indeed the vast majority of my future blog posts will be tutorials that come straight from my work which I hope will be of great use for anyone who may come across them.

Cheers,

Ryan

I am publishing the latest edition of my Swahili verb list, version 1.1 for the month of May. As usual, I am publishing it in several formats which can be found in this directory — but sure to grab the latest copy.

Here are is a sample of the some of the newly added verbs:

1. to sue – dai
2. to fornicate – tembea
3. to ponder – fikiri
4. to suggest – pendekeza
5. to explain clearly – tongoa

There is now a total of 801 verbs. I hope I can best that number by one hundred each team. For some of these definitions I am indebted to the Online Swahili – English  Dictionary for their excellently edited application and its content. Please visit their site if the verb you are looking for isn’t present or you need nouns, etc. Cheers!

How to find verbs?

There are several possible ways to find verbs going from Swahili to English and vice versa. Using Access, you could query the database and much the same with the Excel and CSV version.I think however the the best way to find verbs is to do the following:

1. Visit the the VerbView.html file in the download directory.
2. Press the following key combination on your keypad: control+f. This will bring up the browser’s search function which is very useful for searching for single strings.
3. Type the word you are looking for and check if it exists within VerbView.html.

I hope you’ve found your verb. Just wait until the auto conjugator software arrives .

WARNING TO ALL VISITORS! DO NOT CLICK ANY ADS THAT LOOK LIKE THE BELOW BANNER AD — IT IS A SCAM:

This ad is a scam!

REMEMBER: IF IT SEEMS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT MOST LIKELY IS! ALWAYS RESEARCH THE COMPANY YOU ARE GIVING YOUR CREDIT OR DEBIT CARD NUMBER TO TO ENSURE THEY AREN’T SCAMMERS!

I visited my site this morning and the above ad appeared on my site. Like many other webmasters of blogs and personal websites (not to mention larger websites like that of the BBC International version), I use Google AdSense to generate a few extra dollars for publishing content in the form of a blog and other web utilities like pgen online, a JavaScript password generator. Google doesn’t charge a fee to use the service and it is quite well designed. However, the above ad impression appearing on my page demonstrates a serious flaw in the Google AdSense system. Here is claim 1 in the AdSense patent which describes in part how the system works:

1. A method for determining if an advertisement is relevant to a target document, the method comprising: identifying targeting information for the advertisement; analyzing the content of the target document to identify a set of one or more topics for the target document; comparing the targeting information to the set of one or more topics to determine if a match exists; and determining that the advertisement is relevant to the target document if the match exists.

In a nutshell, the content (read: text) of your website is analyzed and a “term vector” is created based on the frequency of certain terms. These are the terms that influence which ads appear on the page. This is an ingenious system because it matches content with product description. Let’s say a blog has a post describing how to peel a banana. Pretend a company called SpeedPeel exists that has an automatic banana peeler and for their advertising campaign they bid for the keywords “banana” and perhaps “peeling” in the Google AdWords system. After Google’s program analyzes the blog post, they might create a term vector that contains “banana” and “peel” and if the fictional SpeedPeel company bid enough on those keywords, the system would impress that company’s ad on the blog. The company’s offering relates contextually to the blog writer’s topic.

This is a smart system but it seems that scammers are taking advantage of an easy flaw to exploit. These heartless people have infiltrated AdWords and AdSense customer’s users (likely a webmaster’s site’s visitors) may fall prey to ads displayed by Google that are actually scams. This happened on my blog because my current homepage has two posts that talk about a Google scam called the “Google Treasure Chest” scam. Sure enough, a Google scam ad is rearing its head in my top banner slot. The scammers seem to be taking advantage of those people who report the scam on their blog or webpage that employs some advertising system like AdSense to generate revenue. While this is all speculation, the scammers may bid on words like “scam,” “treasure,” and “chest” which would be close or direct matches to the term vector generated for my blog which would might result in an impression.

I bet Google does do a lot to stop them but these fake company’s mutate like the flu and it may not be possible to detect AdWords publishers who are also scammers. One fix is to stop using AdSense but this option seems unreasonable given that most ads aren’t fraudulent. A better and more immediately effective solution is explicitly not implemented by Google. If I saw an ad that I suspected to be a scam, I could try to block that ad by simply denying that publisher the right to have their ads placed on my blog. In addition, I could guess the term vector generated by my page (or Google could supply it to AdSense customers) so I could disallow AdWords from considering certain keywords in its effort to find a publisher match. A different but even better option would be allow user’s to clearly report impressed ads as scams through a link pops up upon the JavaScript onMouseOver event.

There may in fact be an existing way to block these advertisers but I don’t know how to do it. As of now, Google AdSense is displaying ads for fraudulent publisher’s purporting to to help you make money by using Google (and probably Google AdSense at that)! I’ve seen so many variations that Google needs to a better approach to reporting scams displayed by AdSense. Perhaps the aforementioned “suspect fraud” link or another suggestion or combination of the suggestions above. These are user initiated efforts to stop scams which seems like it would be the fastest way to protect the visitors to website’s using AdSense and probably many other ad display networks. If a webmaster spots a known fraudulent ad, it should be quickly “blockable.” I think it would be even better if the user could to the reporting. Either way, if action isn’t taken, AdSense will have to go.

Moving time! As a college student, moving has been a hallmark of my time at Tufts University. A few days ago I moved across campus, which is only half a mile as evident in the map below.

View Larger Map

But even after relocating such a short distance, the patterns of my life have completely changed. Different convenience and liquor stores and new restaurants from which to grab a bite to eat. Right now I am currently in the Hillsides region of Medford, Massachusetts and I must say that my initial impression of my new neighbors has been great.

I haven’t been able to post anything of use lately because getting internet access has been somewhat of a problem. I’ve only ever had to deal with two internet service providers (ISPs) and my experience has been hell. The tenant who just moved out of my current apartment still has service here and until he cancels it (even though he doesn’t live here), I can’t obtain internet access for myself. This is a reasonable policy but its bad form on the part of the former tenant. Luckily, some very kind people downstairs have given me access to their wireless network so I can do homework, “work” work, and post on this blog (among other things). They were very willing to allow me to use their wireless network because they had the same experience, but I like to think they were just being generous people (which I’m sure they are).

I have a tattoo on my arm that basically means “punishment comes limping.” In essence, what goes around comes around. Good things come around too when you take initiative. If there is one characteristic I dislike most about people is selfishness. Of course selfishness may at times be the better option, but in terms of neighborly interactions, this course leaves you the odd man or woman out on the block. In Indian religions, this concept is known as karma. I don’t really like nor believe in any of the religious/supernatural/spiritual aspects of karma. Its essence though forms the basis for practical human interaction.

I challenge whoever reads my blog to try doing something kind for someone else in the next few days despite it costing you time or money. Don’t think of any reward in the future or expect a reciprocating action, just help someone out because they need it. While it’s obvious that the world would be a better place if everyone was a little generous now and then and perhaps my dear reader is under the impression that I am spitting lofty, idealistic words but this is indeed practical advice if you narrow in on those people directly surrounding you. Start at the local level and be a good, helpful neighbor. Assist the dudes lugging a couch up a narrow flight of stairs or help someone pay for the bus ride home. World peace may not result, but I bet that the genorisity towards others relative of your financial state will benefit your emotional well-being as well as someone else’s. Repeated acts of kindness enable one’s self to develop as reputation, which I gauruntee will serve you well. But just remember, selfish people hurt themselves. A seflish reputation is repulsive and so when that grumpy person who likes to only consider their own needs is in need of assistance at some furture moment, they may not get it. And so, punishment does indeed come limping.

A few weeks ago I admittedly got scammed by a this Google Treasure Chest scam that is infesting the the Internet ad networks. Luckily they only got away with $1.97 but LOTS of people have lost significantly more than that.

I recently was browsing the Internet and in an advertisement was an add to make money. I didn’t save the ad’s picture unfortunately but I saved the pictures on the page that it linked to. I remembered those pictures. It turns out it was the same pictures but a completely different story of the same advertisement I got sucked into before (I only clicked on the the viral ad again because I thought it would be to the same “company” so I decided to investiage). The top right corner of the advertisement contains the below picture. Click on the “read more” link below the blog post to view all the pictures in the scam.

Does this person look familar? If so leave the website immediately!

The rest of the photos of in this blog post are typical of these scam advertisement destination pages. DO NOT FALL FOR THIS SCAM LIKE I AND SO MANY OTHER PEOPLE  HAVE! See below for more pictures that are usually found on this particularly nasty scam sometimes found on legitimate ad networks.

Same people in the Treeasure chest scam.

Fake google Adsense earnings.

Couple dancing at their wedding image used in major scam

Range Rover image that a person falsely says has gotten by using Google AdSense. In a way this person is telling the truth but that reveals something awful about he or she.

All nerds know about the epic geek battle between vim and emacs, the two most popular text editors for Unix and Unix-like systems (i.e. Linux, because calling “Linux” without the prefix “GNU” pisses Richard Stallman off so much, I will never call Linux GNU/Linux. That guy has got to learn when enough is enough.) Anyway, I, for no particular reason, am an emacs fan. It’s probably just because I used it first and climbed the steep keyboard shortcut learning curve and never turned back. I have no animosity towards vim users, developers, and even fanatics. I even use it occasionally when I’m logged into a machine that doesn’t have emacs installed.

Episode 37 of the great "Everybody Loves Raymond" comic strip

Emacs can do anything. From reading mail, playing solitaire, to browsing the web, it is one of the most versatile, customizable systems around and the code base is well over one and a half million lines of code (see source analysis). Most of it is written emacs Lisp, a Lisp dialect that I will never bother to learn beyond the simple configuration changes I make to my emacs instances (list based languages though are quite beautiful and I have R. Kent Dybvig’s The Scheme Programming Language sitting in front of me now; Scheme is a LISP dialect as well). And that is the perfect segue into the topic of this tutorial: customizing emacs to use different color schemes.

Luckily, this is very easy to do but how you do it largely depends on what system you are using. The homepage tells you to use your Linux package manager to install it. This is obviously the right way to do it but at least for my system, Ubuntu (and ultimately Debian based Linux) stores this package in “emacs-goodies-el” so to install it type in a terminal “sudo apt-get install emacs-goodies-el.” (no period at the end) The homepage suggests adding the following Lisp configuration snippet to your .emacs file (should live in $HOME/.emacs):

(add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/color-theme.el/file")
(require 'color-theme)
(eval-after-load "color-theme"
  '(progn
     (color-theme-initialize)
     (color-theme-hober)))
 <a href="http://www.ryankaskel.com/2009/05/30/custom-colors-for-emacs/#more-461" class="more-link">Read the rest of this entry &raquo;</a>

Google has a new communications API coming out for beta testing called Google Wave. There are many articles written that explain how it works and what it might be competing against. The gist of it is summed up in a quote from Information Week by someone working on the Wave project: “Wave represents an attempt to imagine “what might e-mail look like if it were invented today.” And indeed this is much of what wave seems about. A combination of instant messaging and e-mail but much more, it is the ability to communicate and share with in anyone in real time who is also “surfing the wave.”

Above is a video on the wave homepage about the service. Unfortunately there is only going to be a limited beta testing which you can sign up for (or at least that’s what I think I signed up for). Anyway, one of the form elements asks you to write a message to the Wave team. I’m hoping that some effort just doing this shows you’d be willing to fill out other forms like bug reports, etc. They suggest a haiku, ASCII art, or a sonnet and I chose the latter because it’s my favorite of the suggested three styles of text. Here is my nerdy effort:

Ode to the Minds of Google

Google engineers surfing the tech wave
Clever coders typing away the future of the net
With foresight and vision Microsoft execs do crave
Admired passion for a world who’s course you set
Communication innovation is my type of game
I write with my heart as I wish to jump into the sea
And with fellow beta testers, surf all the same
I ask you dear team let this humble dream be
I daydream of robots that live in the Wave core
Ideas flickering in the nerves deep in my brain
Already I’m paper modeling my plan and much more
Please don’t let my poetic efforts be in vain;
For I dearly wish to test the Wave API,
But no matter what, I am forever a Google guy.

Does this remind you of that Obama change poster? The one some silly artist that visited Tufts copied and used for his own purposes.

RyanKaskel.com (Ryan Kaskel) for change!

UPDATE JUNE 6, 2009. Click the “Read the rest of this story” link below to read the update.

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