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GSA, Capital Lite Working Group | ChipCrunch http://t.co/zaYvTgyX
Australian open done with, F1 not starting for another month and a half - time to get productive!
can we please get a one-handed backhand tennis player who can beat Nadal and Djokovic in a major, I'm getting tired of watching Federer lose

bajkowski.com

on the sidelines

Thursday, 21 June 2007 22:36 Maciej Bajkowski

This has not been a kind year to me when it comes to injuries. Just as I’ve recovered from my knee surgery and was ready to hit the tennis courts, I stepped on a sharp vent in our apartment unit. The result: a cut about an inch long and about half an inch deep. The Consequence: no exercising for about four weeks. Since the cut is located towards the front of my foot, I can’t avoid stepping on it no matter have carefully I walk, further slowing down the healing process. On the fortune in misfortune side of things, because one can’t drive s stick shift comfortably with just one functional foot, my girlfriend had to take on the task of driving my sports car, which of course she did not mind at all, while I was left driving her truck while rehabilitating my foot.

All of these injuries are definitely not helping my waistline, but they are not the only thing to blame. Lately, given the pleasantly warm evenings here in Texas, I’ve been grilling out quite a bit. Maybe I should rephrase this – I’ve been eating a lot of food that my girlfriend has been grilling. She does a really good job, which makes it very difficult not to eat more than one really needs. Isn’t this great – I’ve just blamed my waistline on my girlfriend – talk about deferring responsibility.

Finally, unable to exercise, I’ve had some time to look around for a house here in Austin, but so far not much has come of it. The problem is that houses that are located close to my new place of work are mostly old and way overpriced. It goes without saying that I can’t afford anything new in that region. On the other hand, nice and affordable new house can be found just outside of Austin, but that would leave me with a commute that would be just a bit longer than desirable. I’ll have to make a decision on this rather sooner than later, but for now I’m still looking.

I’ve also updated my need list with a couple new items, in case you care.

serious reading, the art of war

Thursday, 11 September 2008 08:07 Maciej Bajkowski

There is more to my life than just traveling around the globe, although I cannot complain about traveling per se. As a matter of fact, one of the most enjoyable parts of travelling is the time one obtains to flip-open a book and actually do some reading. Whether sitting at the airport where there are no plugs for a laptop adapter, or in a tiny airplane seat that was designed for a person half your height, or finally at the beach pretending that being exposed to the sun for a prolonged amount of time is a good thing after all, a book is simply a perfect companion. I suppose you can listen to some music as well, or even audio books, but in the end none of these seem quite as satisfying as a book which can take you to places far beyond what you thought your imagination might be capable off.

Anyhow, the latest book that fell victim to my travels has been Sun Tzu’s classic The Art of War. The particular edition I read, was translated by Dr. Thomas Cleary, and can be ordered here if you are interested. It is no secret that The Art of War is highly applicable to the business world. The outcome of wars whether military or economic, in the end is mostly determined by the proper and timely application of some fundamental strategic principles. The problem is that choosing the right strategy at the right time given particular conditions, results in an infinite amount of possibilities for defeat or victory. The important lesson is to understand that no method or strategy will work all the time. In addition, knowing how to act and when to act, is just as important as knowing when not to act at all. Finally, knowing your own abilities, the abilities of your opponent, as well as the conditions will maximize your probability of pursuing the best strategy. Of course, the book delves a lot deeper on each of these topics, it has over 400 pages of valuable content after all, but this was just a little primer to wet your appetite.

There are several reasons, why I chose Thomas' translation while browsing the myriad of editions available at the bookstore. First of all, I simply like his writing style. He is easy to understand, and his translations flow naturally, which probably has a lot to do with the fact that he has translated quite a few classical Asian and Islamic texts. Second, each section of the Art of War in his translation is accompanied by translations of commentaries from several other prominent Chinese philosophers and military strategists of ancient times, such Cao Cao, Li Quan, Wang Xi, and many more. This really gives depth to the translation and brings to light the different interpretations of the ancient text; in particular since occasionally these philosophers interpret the same passages very differently. On other occasions, they build on each other to arrive at deeper and non-obvious conclusions. If this were not enough, this edition also contains translations from The Lost Art of War by Sun Bin, as well as translation from the Sliver Sparrow Art of War, which contains previously unknown fragments of The Art of War.

Having translated many ancient Asian texts, Thomas has a very comprehensive understanding of the evolution of Chinese philosophical thought, which comes is very helpful as on many occasions he is able to provide very useful background information that allows a less well-rounded reader to gain a deeper understanding of the translated text. Anyhow, if you need a little reading that is more on the serious side, and might be beneficial to your career, I would highly recommend this edition.

windows xp, network connections folder empty fix

Monday, 06 December 2010 04:50 Maciej Bajkowski

It is nearly the end of 2010 and one of my machines is still running Windows XP - this either is a testament to how well Windows XP works or to how slow I am at upgrading some of my systems. Anyhow, the other day I encountered a rather unusual problem in that I needed to change a few settings on my network adapter, however for an unknown reason my network connections folder was empty and when accessing it I was greeted with the following error message: “The network connections folder was unable to retrieve the list of Network adapters on your machine. Please make sure that the Network Connections service is enabled and running.” Quickly checking the services running on the systems showed that the network connections service was running correctly and as such there must have been a different culprit. Browsing around the web in hope of finding a solution I ended up going down many different dead ends, but eventually I ran across the following solution which worked, so if you have a similar problem hopefully you’ll find this useful:

1. Click Start/Run. Then type cmd.exe and click OK

2. In the cmd wind type the following and press enter after each

a. regsvr32 netshell.dll
b. regsvr32 netcfgx.dll
c. regsvr32 netman.dll

3. Restart your system

The above fixed the problem for me. It seems that as is typical in the Windows world, some of the DLLs were not registered correctly for one reason or another. If you get an error message trying to register one of the DLLs above it might indicate that the dll is corrupt, in which case you might want to grab a copy from another Windows XP machine and after copying it over the existing one, trying the above procedure again. If that still does not work there is always the brute force option of re-installing Windows XP over itself – This should be a last resort through since a lot of the security patches will need to be downloaded thereafter all over again.

Christmas 2010 Wish List

Monday, 13 December 2010 22:38 Maciej Bajkowski

I suppose it is that time of the year to put together a wish list, particularly before I start receiving things that I really don’t need or will absolutely never ever use. If you decide to pick up one of the things below, please be sure to send me a not so that I can strike it out, since duplicates are not fun either. Anyhow, here it goes:

1. ~~AEM 21-203DK 3" Inlet x 5" Element Dryflow Air Filter~~ - I've been using the same filter on my car's cold air intake for several years now, and although I've cleaned it regularly it is way past due for a replacement.

2. ~~Rattleware 20-Ounce Latte Art Milk Frothing Pitcher~~ - My espresso has always been tasty, but I just keep having issues frothing the milk correctly so hopefully this will help.

3. ~~Panasonic ES8249S Arc IV Nanotech Vortex Wet/Dry Rechargeable Shaver~~ - Been using the Panasonic ES8164 for several years now and the battery, blades, and foils are pretty much done with. Given all this it makes more sense to get a new shaver rather than fixing the old one.

4. ~~Keyless Entry Remote for 2003 Nissan 350Z~~ - My old remote began acting absolutely crazy, opening and closing the car at random to the point where I had to take out the battery. Using the key presently which is very annoying.

5. ~~McLaren Limited Edition Silverstone Print~~ - I could definitely use some art on my walls at home. Might as well start with a nice McLaren print.

More coming soon!

MBV Joomla Open Graph Plugin

Tuesday, 13 September 2011 05:23 Maciej Bajkowski

Description:

Joomla plugin which enables detailed control over Facebook Open Graph (og) meta tags. Open graph meta tags assist Facebook in fetching the proper page data when people share your page content via URLs or like buttons. This plugin supports the following tags: og:title, og:type, og:image, og:url, og:site_name, fb:admin, and, fb:app_id. Multiple images are supported as is dynamic image extraction from content, such that the images shared on Facebook always corresponds to images embedded in the actual content. Installation is simple and straight forward just like any Joomla plugin. The the only required parameter is a static image URL in case no images are found in the content. Always displaying a static image, url, and page title are also supported. Please review the feature list for a complete set of supported options. Feel free to shoot me an email if you run into issues or have any questions. If you use it and like it, please consider giving it some positive feedback over at the Joomla! Extension Directory.