Popular Posts

  1. Stripped-down Django Tutorial: The django official tutorial consists of 4 parts, unnecessarily long, mixes commands with text, and omit some important details. Here is an attempt at providing a more complete and more condensed version of the tutorial.

    Install Django. The latest tu… 10 comment(s) | 1053 view(s) | posted on February, 15

  2. WordPress Automatic Upgrade to 2.7.1 Fails on 1and1 Hosting: I’ve been trying to upgrade to the latest WordPress (version 2.7.1) for a while without success. Every time I initiate the upgrade, whether through WordPress’ built-in automatic upgrade feature or using the automatic upgrade plugin, the process stalls when… 7 comment(s) | 1125 view(s) | posted on March, 7
  3. GenieKnows Local Version 1.0 is Live!: After 4 years in the making, the GenieKnows Local search engine is finally live! I am very excited about this achievement as I was heading its development for the past 1.5 years. It is one of only three engines covering all of the US and Canada: GenieKnows… 5 comment(s) | 673 view(s) | posted on March, 4
  4. Third Wednesday Social Media Tweetup – Impressions: Third Wednesday (#thirdwednesday on twitter) is a monthly informal networking event. There is no RSVP or membership, just show up at Foggy Goggle on Argyle Street between 5-7 PM on the third Wednesday of the month.

    Today’s topic was Twitter and how loca… 4 comment(s) | 491 view(s) | posted on August, 20

  5. Atlantic Canada’s War-of-Minds at Dalhousie University, Halifax: Friday, October 23, witnessed the most anticipated programming competition in Atlantic Canada. Teams from Atlantic Canadian universities gathered at Dalhousie University in a show-off of programming and problem-solving skills. Each team consisted of 3 part… 3 comment(s) | 765 view(s) | posted on October, 25
  6. Personalization of Content Ranking in the Context of Local Search: My paper entitled “Personalization of Content Ranking in the Context of Local Search” has been accepted for publication at the IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI2009) as a regular paper. The acceptance rate was pretty low at 16%…. 2 comment(s) | 471 view(s) | posted on July, 3
  7. GenieKnows Sponsors the Cannonball One Lap of America Race: It took a while to get everything sorted out and in order, but now it is official. GenieKnows is sponsoring Stephen and me at this year’s Cannonball Run One Lap of America. It gets even better, GenieKnows is now an official sponsor the event. The press rel… 2 comment(s) | 356 view(s) | posted on April, 18
  8. Halifax Tattoo Festival Shrinking Every Year: The Royal Nova Scotia Tattoo Festival is a yearly tradition in Halifax, NS featuring performers and miltary bands from around the world. The first time attended the festival was back in 2005 and I absolutely loved it. It was such a well organized show, so … 2 comment(s) | 709 view(s) | posted on June, 25
  9. Upgrading to Wordpress 2.5.1 and K2 RC6: Today I became a happier WordPress user because I managed to upgrade to WordPress 2.5.1 with a surprisingly easy process, as well as migrating to the latest K2 release. The short story: install the WordPress Automatic upgrade plugin, run it, correct failed… 2 comment(s) | 975 view(s) | posted on June, 28
  10. The Twitter Times – Personalized News from Your Tweeps: The Twitter Times is an interesting news site that is built on top of the Twitter real-time stream. The site describes itself as:
    “The Twitter Times is a real-time personalized newspaper generated from your Twitter account.”
    It basically monitors the glo…     1 comment(s) | 500 view(s) | posted on September, 7
  11. Live Blog: Syntactic Movement in Statistical Translation: This is a live blog of the Dalhousie CS seminar by Dr. Colin Cherry of Microsoft Research, Natural Language Processing Group entitles “Syntactic Movement in Statistical Translation”

    11:33 – People are still arriving. Dr. Keselj is having a conversation … 1 comment(s) | 1206 view(s) | posted on August, 21

  12. New Look and Backend: The site has been redesigned in WordPress and the content is currently transitioning into this new look.

    Feedback is welcome through the contact page or view comments…. 1 comment(s) | 319 view(s) | posted on February, 29

  13. Career Panel: On Wednesday, March 5, 2008, I participated in a Career Advice Panel for International Students at Dalhousie University as one of the panelists. My advice focused on three points: diversification vs. specialization, networking, and self-promotion.
    The pan…     0 comment(s) | 273 view(s) | posted on March, 13
  14. Snow in Timberlea, Nova Scotia:

    The second heavy snowfall of the week on Friday night, November 21, 2008, as well as the following Saturday resulted in 25 to 35cm of snow on the ground. Some areas were hit harder than others. Add to that the drifting snow effect that resulted from st… 0 comment(s) | 491 view(s) | posted on November, 25

  15. The Meaning of the Hand: People often ask me, what does the hand in my avatar mean? Here are 3 interpretations, feel free to send me others:

    A picture of an alien
    My hand before the operation
    It represent the suffering of human kind and our inevitable salvation; or, more e… 0 comment(s) | 282 view(s) | posted on April, 13

  16. Memories of Milan, Italy: Transportation: Milan has an extensive public transportation system that consists of trains, metro, trams, and buses. The train connects the Malpensa airport to Milan. The ride takes about 40 minutes and costs 11 euro. The city of Milan and the suburbs are covered with a … 0 comment(s) | 1562 view(s) | posted on September, 26
  17. Who is “the Coolest Guy on the Internet”?: Apparently there is an unofficial contest in the SEO world that started earlier this month to rank number one on Google for “”the Coolest Guy on the Internet”. The contest runs until the end of February and the winner gets one year of bragging rights. I de… 0 comment(s) | 638 view(s) | posted on February, 18
  18. The Simplicity of Posting on Posterous: I am yet to see a publishing platform that is simpler than posterous. With a single email message containing normal text you create your personal blog and make your first post. No signup, no email commands, no hassles. It’s that unbelievably simple. I didn… 0 comment(s) | 5145 view(s) | posted on June, 29
  19. Registered in One Lap of America: It is official. I will be a co-driver with Stephen Noton driving his forfiveone at the 25th anniversary, the 2008 Tire Rack One Lap of America (formerly Cannonball Run).

    The forfiveone is 451 smart fortwo that has been improved by Stephen. The mods incl… 0 comment(s) | 268 view(s) | posted on March, 3

  20. Advice from Successful Ladies and Men: CNN Money has an excellent articles where they interview 22 people from political leaders, company executives, investors, entrepreneurs, and even a chef, asking them to share the best advice they ever got. Below is a summary of their answers:

    “Keep it … 0 comment(s) | 390 view(s) | posted on July, 2

  21. Future of the Web: Mobile + Social + Linked: By now, it should be clear to everyone that the future of the Web is mobile devices, social networking, and linked data. Although this realization did not come to me until I attended the World Wide Web Conference (WWW2009) in Madrid, Spain, at the end of A… 0 comment(s) | 345 view(s) | posted on May, 7
  22. WWW2009 Reading List: There were several interesting papers published at the 18th World Wide Web Conference (WWW2009) in Madrid last month. Below is a list of papers that I’m planning to read:

    This list will be updated as I remember/discover more interesting papers.

    Extr… 0 comment(s) | 276 view(s) | posted on May, 7

  23. All the tweets of @www2009 at the World Wide Web Conference in Madrid 2009: From April 19 until April 26, I was in Madrid, Spain, attending the 18th World Wide Web Conference (WWW2009). I kept a live account of the conference and Madrid from my perspective at the twitter user @www2009. All my tweets are listed below. For a more co… 0 comment(s) | 1159 view(s) | posted on April, 29
  24. Two Papers Accepted at the WWW 2009 Developer Track: The World Wide Web Conference (WWW2009) will be held in Madrid, Spain, April 20-24, 2009. I will be co-presenting two papers at the Developer track. The first paper is co-authored with Jason Hines and entitled “Query GeoParser: A Spatial-Keyword Query Pars… 0 comment(s) | 300 view(s) | posted on April, 11
  25. First Earth Day Celebration: This year was the first time I participated in Earth Day. From 8:30 PM to 9:30 PM Atlantic Time, all the lights in my house were off. My family and I enjoyed a romantic dinner lit by numerous candles.

    We had a few objectives in doing this. First, to par… 0 comment(s) | 413 view(s) | posted on March, 29

  26. The New Face of GenieKnows.com: GenieKnows.com relaunched their site with a new image and a new functionality – it is now the home of version 2.0 of their local search platform. This new release brings user-contributed reviews of local businesses along with user-contributed photos. Other… 0 comment(s) | 359 view(s) | posted on March, 11
  27. GNU grep 2.5.4 released: After almost two years in the making, and with the assistance of the fine people on the bug-grep mailing list, I have made an official release of GNU grep 2.5.4. This is my first significant contribution to Free Software and the Open Source world. Now I ca… 0 comment(s) | 279 view(s) | posted on February, 10
  28. Online RSS Aggregation Sites: This article is in-progress.

    I am compiling a list of notable sites (i.e., sites with consistent traffic, traffic growth, or sites that people talk about elsewhere) that are focused on aggregating content from other sites, primarily through RSS feeds.
    … 0 comment(s) | 243 view(s) | posted on February, 8

  29. Wrong place, wrong time, right name: Drinking my medium roast coffee with sugar and cream and eating my uber expensive organic (or not?) blueberry muffin at Just Us Cafe on Barrinton Street. Editing my paper for a big conference, minding my own business, not bothering anyone.
    - Tony?
    I thin…     0 comment(s) | 275 view(s) | posted on December, 2
  30. Thesis Made of Perks Coffee: Milestone in Coffee Drinking: This week I reached a new milestone in my coffee-to-thesis conversion project. As you can see in the picture of my Perks Coffee Gold Card, I have completed stamped every cell on it. Mind you, the number of stamps doesn’t correspond exactly to the number of… 0 comment(s) | 301 view(s) | posted on June, 27
  31. Don’t Do For Money What You Wouldn’t Do For Free: During my first real off-campus consulting job, my client asked me a simple questions, “are you enjoying working on this project?” My answer was less simple:
    I wouldn’t do for money what I wouldn’t do for free.
    Ever before and ever since, this principle …     0 comment(s) | 186 view(s) | posted on June, 25
  32. Paradoxes without Contradiction:
    Darkness of the day
    and brightness of the night
    Fairy tales of truth
    of the horseless knight
    Sleeping before noon
    waking by midnight
    Dreaming of the life
    sleeping in the light
    Silence lost in screams
    of this peaceful fight

    – Tony Abou-A… 0 comment(s) | 198 view(s) | posted on May, 29

  33. GenieKnows Local Update: Better Map, Showtimes, and User Contributions: This week, GenieKnows updated its Local platform with a few new features:

    Map caching has been optimized, providing faster map load time
    The map projections has been switched Mercator, the industry standard for online interactive maps. The streets no… 0 comment(s) | 324 view(s) | posted on May, 23

  34. Revolution 2008: Spinning for Life: On April 18, 2008, I will be joining many other enthusiasts from the Halifax/Dartmouth area to do a 30 minute spin on a stationary bike at the Historic Properties to raise some money for the Dartmouth General Hospital who is going to buy a CT 64 Scanner.
    …     0 comment(s) | 239 view(s) | posted on April, 17
  35. My First “smart ride”: Earlier today I had the pleasure to ride in a smart. It was my first smart ride ever. So what?, you may ask. What is so special about a smart ride? This ride was very special indeed. Not only was it a smart, but it was a smart forfiveone ride!

    This car … 0 comment(s) | 193 view(s) | posted on April, 13

  36. GenieKnows Local Updates to version 1.1: This week GenieKnows released version 1.1 of their local search, only weeks after the launch of version 1.0. Version 1.1 of the local includes many interface enhancements and bug fixes; thanks to all the feedback that was sent to them by the early users of… 0 comment(s) | 178 view(s) | posted on March, 21
  37. Why WordPress?: I was previously using a set of home-brewed PHP scripts to manage my site that I wrote a few years ago. Back then, WordPress was still buggy, hard to use and configure, and the styles weren’t as flexible.

    My primitive scripts did the job well initially… 0 comment(s) | 210 view(s) | posted on March, 1

  38. Wordpress Plugins Used by this Site: As of today, the following plugins are active on this site:

    Akismet: A popular anti-spam plugin the screens and blocks spammy comments
    All in One SEO Pack: it gives a great flexibility in editing meta tags for individual posts and pages, but I use it… 0 comment(s) | 731 view(s) | posted on September, 27

  39. New Book: Quantifying Uncertainty in Reasoning and Question Answering: Probabilistic Relaxed Unification Formalism and Applications in Automated Question-Answering Systems
    Reasoning about natural language requires robustness in the face of uncertainty about the validity of the information contained in the text. Many natural …     0 comment(s) | 701 view(s) | posted on October, 4
  40. Memories of Milan, Italy: Historic Churches: The churches in Milano are just fascinating. I spent many hours during my trip in Milan going from one historic church to another. And although this started because there wasn’t much else to do, I kept going because I enjoyed it so much. I visited a total … 0 comment(s) | 542 view(s) | posted on October, 13