keithtom.com - Home

test 123

2008-08-15T19:06:00Z

I’m at erubyconf, listening to talks and chatting w/ kevin. Does my site work again???

more stuff

2008-06-30T23:17:00Z

its been an eventful few days. went to comfest, which stands for community festival. it was pretty relaxed atmosphere and filled with just about everything the community had to offer: food, music, poetry, painting, bunch o’ vendors, etc… i was kinda surprised how un-conservative Columbus could be. there were several girls just walking around topless or covered with paint. it was kinda a downer at the end of the day when i had an accident with a lot of dog poo and a very angry man. but i wont go into details here.

turns out eva is able to come to montreal this weekend! so i’ll be planning a bunch of montreal tourist stuff. hopefully some of it will appeal to everyone so i can see ppl at the same time. i hear the jazz festival is going on so might try to catch that, maybe goto schwartz’s, check out mt royal, definitely eating at restaurants. actually i think she wanted to goto o’noir. i wonder if they still have crazy reservations… and of course old port.

got a letter asking to mow our lawn from an anonymous neighbour. i like landscaping and all – it’s beautiful to look at. but i dont care for it enough to spend my time maintaining the grass. i gotta say, its a big turn off from owning a house.

Random stuff

searchme.com
survival of the fittest
- bulls vs crocodiles vs lions
- zebra tries to drown lioness

Time Management from Randy Pausch
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back again

2008-06-28T14:26:00Z

so i went from visiting almost every month, to a big gap, to 2 visits in 2 weeks. yep, i’m booked to come back for july 4th weekend.

this is actually partly so I can get my visa stuff out of the way before I leave for peru. so that’s all for now…

i've been drafted

2008-06-28T08:28:00Z

well not yet. so funny thing, apparently i’m registered for selective service, which is for the service for drafting. i actually got this letter a while ago in the mail but kinda ignored it. then decided today i’d spend some time sorting out all this junk. just fantastic. i particularly like the part where they say, ‘hey, if you are on a visa and we made a mistake, do all this shit for us to fix it’. anyway, i guess this goes to the top of the priorities.

some random thoughts

2008-06-25T21:16:00Z

i figure i better update this thing before people forget about me =) ... and what better day than today.

so i attended the startup drinks event, which was cool. met some ppl, exchanged some contacts, had lots of fun and played apples to apples, believe it or not. reminded me of new years…

otherwise, nothing too exciting. boring paper work and reading about taxes, visas. trying to prep for peru also. oh and i have to fix my car. i have a flat tire…

i managed to get a 125$ voucher for my delayed flight back from montreal. if you didn’t hear, i waited 6-7 hrs at montreal airport, then about 3 hrs in detroit airport and stayed there at a hotel. got into columbus next day around 10-11’ish. it sucked.

I checked out a latin festival last week and there is going to be a community festival this week.

its been raining like crazy with thunderstorms at night.

oh and i made some kiva loans a couple weeks ago. 25$ to 3 ppl in cambodia, nigeria and peru. i’ve started to get paid back, which was what i was really curious about! they actually say in the terms of use:

Kiva makes no representation, warranty, covenant or guarantee that any funds you lend to a Borrower via the Website will be repaid and (b) loans made via the Website (each, a “Loan”) bear a high risk of non-repayment.

and also my site has been going down like crazy. stupid programs keep posting comments about viagra and shit. i haven’t had time to look into the source code for my blog, so i just killed the comments. sorry!!

that’s all for now…

alright, i just looked into some possible changes that will help fight the spammers. so maybe comments might work. maybe my site goes down in flames… we’ll see.

google app engine

2008-06-12T09:41:00Z

I got to the airport early since that was the only time eva could drive me. i feel like sometimes, flying feels too casual. anyway, so i’ve been here for about 2.5 hrs now. went through customs and got myself some breakfast. with the rest of the time, i’ve been reading on the web and then got caught up in this great google app engine tutorial.

in short, google app engine makes it really easy to write websites that run on google’s infrastructure, which needless to say, is pretty powerful. it doesn’t feel ruby easy, but having worked with python for about a year i was able to code this simple site, and deploy to google. not bad for my morning at the airport, and then writing a blog about it. more about app engine….

the tutorial might be worth looking at. even if you don’t code. you’ll probably be copy/pasting most things and just altering a few of the obvious things. but its a neat experience.

the great thing about using app engine is that it can scale with your site usage. that’s a big problem with websites, how many users can you handle before your site dies? or in my case, how many spam bots can you handle…

fyi, app engine is google’s counter to amazon’s web services, which has been pretty successful so far. of course, i think google has managed to get a few cool features in like google authentication and a slick deployment app so i don’t have to worry about anything but coding.

i wonder what will happen with this market. these two giants definitely have the infrastructure setup, so the barrier to compete is enormous. they can both provide unified user accounts, as well as integrate payment systems for you. i can’t imagine it being too far before sites start popping up and they’ll be asking you to log in with your google/amazon account, and then you can buy/check out with them and it’ll all just work. i’m mostly not sure if i’m excited or scared…

it isn’t like they force you to use their authentication or payment system. but chances are, people will at least start off by using it, because it just integrates so easily. then, afterwards, the programmer will start to code up other payment solutions, to give the user more choice. it just seems like there will be this converging effect. users don’t want to log in on their personal account, then log into their paypal to buy. it will just be, log in with google, buy.

okay, enough speculation. app engine is cool, easy and powerful. check it out.

startup weekend!

2008-06-10T21:45:00Z

kevin brought my attention to this great event which is actually coming to columbus, july 18-20. in short, you have 48 hrs to brainstorm with legal ppl, business ppl, project managers, developers etc. to launch a startup.

pretty awesome.

i don’t expect world changing startups. but it’s a good networking opportunity and worst case a chance to work with interesting ppl. turns out columbus has a good vibe for this kinda stuff and i hope it continues to grow.

i’m also attending a related Startup Drinks, which will also be fun.

the cost of living is really low here and there is a strong ruby community. i’m curious as to what is holding columbus back from being a startup hub…

update

2008-06-10T21:41:00Z

man, my site keeps going down and its annoying. i think it has something to do with the 500 spam comments pending my approval… i need to beef up my site to handle more traffic. but that’s a long ways away… in the meantime:

montreal first off, i just sent an email trying to make last minute plans. wewt. sorry for the late notice, it was a bit of trouble to get time off. work is super busy and we are a bit behind.

work my contract actually ends july 1st. so i’m also trying to figure out what im going to do, which is a pretty tough question actually and probably taking too much of my time. i do know what thing though… i’m going to peru!

peru this was pretty hard to get since it involved timing work and eva’s schedule. but i’m really excited to go. i’ll be in peru for about 2 weeks – visiting machu pichu, eva’s home town, maybe check out the amazons if i get a chance too.

i hear people have been asking about eva, so i think the important info is: i think we are serious. it isn’t marriage serious or kids serious. but things are going really well, having fun, learning a lot – so its good. i’ll probably be meeting a lot of her family while in her hometown. maybe she’ll be able to come by montreal in the summer.

misc sold my futon. can’t say it got much use ahem. oh well. i got about 50% of the cost back. gotta luv craigslist. i think i’ll keep trying to sell of some stuff so i can be lightweight when it comes time to leave. i think it’ll be cool to pack up my car and drive back to montreal, maybe stop by some places on the way. so i gotta drop some stuff…

think that’s all for now. the rest probably isn’t worth mentioning

montreal confirmed!

2008-06-05T12:18:00Z

i’ll be in next thursday (june 12th) till sunday. sorry for the late notice. it has been hard to get time at work. more later… must get back to work.

net neutrality explained

2008-06-04T23:46:00Z

tag galaxy

2008-05-26T21:06:00Z

Explore flickr in a very interesting way.

how to change a tire (ehow.com)

2008-05-26T15:22:00Z

i was just thinking that i didn’t know how to do this, and it isn’t like anyone tells you. so chances are, if you ever need to know, you won’t. this is a 3 minute video that goes over the basics. maybe it’ll be useful?

video was kinda annoying, check out the link if you want to see it.

See here for more.

Sorry about the auto play, these guys have a slightly rude video player.

comments now moderated

2008-05-26T14:07:00Z

i’m getting tons of bots spamming my article comments. so i’ll have to put an approval process on my comments now =(

sorry. if i have time, i’ll look into putting up some captchas.

want to gain respect for geraldo rivera?

2008-05-22T21:17:00Z

f still has not be able to reach L.

2008-05-21T19:53:00Z