http://www.blogger.com/feeds/10006613/posts/summaryTue, 19 Sep 2006 14:30:11 +0000http://nathanbalon.net/weblog/blog.htmlNathan BalonBlogger115http://www.blogger.com/feeds/10006613/posts/summary/115875360820067822Wed, 20 Sep 2006 11:41:00 +00002006-09-20T08:10:02.821-04:00September 25-29, I am attending the ACM SIGMOBILE Mobicomm 2006 conference in Los Angeles. I am excited about this. It will be my first time attending an ACM conference. The Mobicomm conference is one of the leading conferences in the world on wireless networks. Some of the topics that will be presented there are: ad hoc networks, cellular networks, sensor networks, wireless LANs, and meshhttp://nathanbalon.net/weblog/2006/09/mobicom-2006.htmlNathan Balonhttp://www.blogger.com/feeds/10006613/posts/summary/115831867150970640Fri, 15 Sep 2006 11:08:00 +00002006-09-15T07:13:16.496-04:00If anyone is undecided on who they want to vote for in this Fall's election for Governor of the State of Michigan, I would recommend voting for Greg Creswell.http://nathanbalon.net/weblog/2006/09/michigans-governor-race.htmlNathan Balonhttp://www.blogger.com/feeds/10006613/posts/summary/115724579945604872Sun, 03 Sep 2006 01:05:00 +00002006-09-02T21:10:44.256-04:00I submitted a chapter to be published in the "Handbook on Mobile Ad Hoc and Pervasive Communications". I was glad to learn that the chapter I submitted on vehicular ad hoc networks was accepted for publication. That was the first time a attempted to submit a book chapter, so I was happy to learn that it was accepted.http://nathanbalon.net/weblog/2006/09/book-chapter.htmlNathan Balonhttp://www.blogger.com/feeds/10006613/posts/summary/115507631474169520Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:52:00 +00002006-08-08T18:49:56.723-04:00I finished reading the book "Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government - Saving Privacy in the Digital Age", by Steven Levy. This was a great book and I would highly recommend it to anyone. I think people would even find it interesting if they aren't interested in cryptography. The book gives an account of the invention of public key cryptography and the people who were responsible for http://nathanbalon.net/weblog/2006/08/crypto-by-steven-levy.htmlNathan Balonhttp://www.blogger.com/feeds/10006613/posts/summary/115507096432980197Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:57:00 +00002006-08-08T17:27:44.676-04:00AOL recently published the search results of random users over a three month period. The AOL search results contain approximately 2 gigs of data. Here is the READ ME and one of the search result files released from AOL. In total there are 10 files of search results. The file I posted contains 3,558,412 lines of text, so it gives a good indication of the typical online searches. I found it very http://nathanbalon.net/weblog/2006/08/aol-search-results-published_08.htmlNathan Balonhttp://www.blogger.com/feeds/10006613/posts/summary/115357894329302518Sat, 22 Jul 2006 13:59:00 +00002006-07-22T10:35:43.293-04:00Over the last few months, I have been working on a Master's project on broadcast reliability for vehicular ad hoc networks. In early June, I submitted my initial work to the VANET 2006 Conference, sponsored by ACM SIGMOBILE. I was happy to hear that my paper was accepted to the conference as a poster paper. This was the first time that I attempted to submit a paper to a conference so I was http://nathanbalon.net/weblog/2006/07/vanet-2006-conference.htmlNathan Balonhttp://www.blogger.com/feeds/10006613/posts/summary/115303265595683951Sun, 16 Jul 2006 06:19:00 +00002006-07-16T03:01:02.723-04:00When source code is inconsistently spaced it becomes very hard to read. I was using a module for the ns-2 network simulator that implemented 802.11e. The problem with the code was the author either indented 2 space, 4 spaces, or a tab. It would have taken me hours to format the code by hand, so I decided to look for a program that would do the formatting for me. I happen to try the GNU http://nathanbalon.net/weblog/2006/07/gnu-indent_16.htmlNathan Balonhttp://www.blogger.com/feeds/10006613/posts/summary/115156589177372461Thu, 29 Jun 2006 07:04:00 +00002006-07-11T05:01:07.536-04:00Today, I purchased the O'Reilly book "Statistics Hacks", by Bruce Frey. It seems like a decent book, although I have only read the first few chapters so far. In one of the sections the author talks about using statistics to determine if a group of people is below average intellegence or not. I had no idea what an IQ test is like. I had never taken one before. I was kind of interested to http://nathanbalon.net/weblog/2006/06/iq-test.htmlNathan Balonhttp://www.blogger.com/feeds/10006613/posts/summary/115139209537484326Tue, 27 Jun 2006 06:38:00 +00002006-06-27T04:09:54.773-04:00A few weeks I ago I read Paul Graham's essay "How to Be Silicon Valley" that describes what it would take to recreate Silicon Valley in another part of the United States. Graham basically concludes that you need a lot of nerds, people with money to invest, a top University and the right type of city (e.g., good weather) to create an area where technological innovation will thrive. One thing I http://nathanbalon.net/weblog/2006/06/hackers-and-painters.htmlNathan Balonhttp://www.blogger.com/feeds/10006613/posts/summary/115095279190822408Thu, 22 Jun 2006 04:40:00 +00002006-06-22T01:13:00.273-04:00 This is a computer networks video, I found a while back that I wanted to post. It is kind of interesting to see what the people's thoughts were of networks in those days. Today, networks are so common place, but at the time that this film was made it was an entirely different story. The concepts they talk about in the film are still the same as they are today. If had to guess, I would say http://nathanbalon.net/weblog/2006/06/nostalgic-computer-networks-video.htmlNathan Balonhttp://www.blogger.com/feeds/10006613/posts/summary/115087676907844877Wed, 21 Jun 2006 07:26:00 +00002006-06-21T06:41:47.903-04:00I was looking around online and I happen to come across a web page explaining the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which is used to determine a person's personality. I think I remember reading about this personality test in a psychology class I took in college. It seemed interesting to have a matrix, containing 16 unique personalities, to classify a person. After seeing page, I was interested in http://nathanbalon.net/weblog/2006/06/myers-briggs-type-indicator.htmlNathan Balonhttp://www.blogger.com/feeds/10006613/posts/summary/115057933535302883Sat, 17 Jun 2006 21:13:00 +00002006-06-17T17:39:37.376-04:00 This is a short cartoon The Corruptibles created by the EFF to explain the dangers of DRM. I wanted to post this to help spread the EFF's message.http://nathanbalon.net/weblog/2006/06/drm-cartoon_115057933535302883.htmlNathan Balonhttp://www.blogger.com/feeds/10006613/posts/summary/115042913785304392Fri, 16 Jun 2006 02:53:00 +00002006-06-16T00:00:29.066-04:00Most of the computers I have owned in the past are from parts I have thrown together. Today, it is more expensive for one to build their own computer, but I always prefer to build my own system because I can to choose the components. When it comes to a laptop on the other hand, the consumer doesn't really have the same option of building their own system. About three years ago, I purchased a http://nathanbalon.net/weblog/2006/06/emachines-laptop-class-action-lawsuit.htmlNathan Balonhttp://www.blogger.com/feeds/10006613/posts/summary/115027097066129131Wed, 14 Jun 2006 07:35:00 +00002006-06-14T03:43:13.426-04:00Since Mid-January I have been working on a master's project on VANETs. This is my initial paper on the project. There are still a few things that I would like to test before my final presentation on the project. I am hoping within the next few weeks I will wrap it up.http://nathanbalon.net/weblog/2006/06/initial-project-paper.htmlNathan Balonhttp://www.blogger.com/feeds/10006613/posts/summary/115026630257959827Wed, 14 Jun 2006 06:06:00 +00002006-06-14T03:12:34.963-04:00The last few weeks, I have been working on a chapter on the topic of vehicular ad hoc networks to submit for a book on mobile ad hoc network, with my advisor for my master's project. The authors of the book wanted the chapter submitted using LaTex. At first, I was kind of reluctant to try LaTex. I have never used LaTex before, so I thought it would take a long time to get familiar with. All http://nathanbalon.net/weblog/2006/06/latex.htmlNathan Balon