Welcome to Argalax

Hi, my name is Alexander and this is my website.

It describes my work, hobbies, various projects, intellectual pursuits, current interests, and whatever else seems important and/or interesting at the moment.

I live in Canada, just east of Toronto, and work as technical team leader in the IT industry.

In spare time I enjoy writing some code, developing web applications, working on my robot, and FreeBSD/Linux projects, reading sci-fi, finance and technical books, building my cabin in the wilderness and travel when I can.

Here are some technical news to read...

Technology

Facebook clickjacking legal row [Fri, 27 Jan 2012 22:04:55 GMT]
The social network and Washington State sue a marketing firm over claims that it deceived users by hiding 'Like' buttons. The firm denies the charge.

Top Euro MP quits in piracy row [Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:24:09 GMT]
A European Parliament rapporteur stands down in protest as a controversial anti-piracy agreement is signed by several countries.

Botnet suspect denies involvement [Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:55:03 GMT]
The Russian man accused by Microsoft of being behind the Kelihos botnet attack insists he is "absolutely not guilty".

FBI social network scraping app [Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:46:40 GMT]
The FBI asks contractors to suggest a system that can "scrape" information from social networks to build alert maps.

Twitter 'can censor by country' [Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:44:05 GMT]
Twitter says it now has the technology to censor tweets on a country by country basis, a move which is criticised by freedom of information campaigners.

Intel buys RealNetworks patents [Thu, 26 Jan 2012 19:37:21 GMT]
Intel is paying $120m (ТЃ76m) for RealNetwork's video patents. Experts say it undermines claims that a "patent bubble" has burst.

Fines threat for credit messages [Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:02:02 GMT]
Firms face raids and fines of up to ТЃ500,000 for sending unsolicited text messages about credit or compensation.

Call for illegal site demotion [Thu, 26 Jan 2012 19:04:14 GMT]
Rights campaigners have criticised plans to ask search engines to demote illegal sites in order to fight piracy.

Web economy 'to double by 2016' [Fri, 27 Jan 2012 06:30:36 GMT]
With half the world online by 2016, the web economy in the G20 countries is set to nearly double in size to $4.2tn (ТЃ2.7tn), research suggests.

Samsung in year end sales boost [Fri, 27 Jan 2012 02:24:14 GMT]
South Korea's Samsung Electronics announces a 17% rise in profits in the last three months of 2011, as smartphone sales boosted earnings.

Science

'Microplastic' threat to shores [Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:39:37 GMT]
Microscopic plastic debris from washing clothes is accumulating in the marine environment and could be entering the food chain, a study warns.

More uses for 'miracle material' [Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:00:27 GMT]
Graphene, often described as a "miracle material", can be used to distil alcohol, according to a new study in the Science journal.

Sea lions 'shot' on US west coast [Sat, 28 Jan 2012 18:00:46 GMT]
At least eight sea lions have been shot dead in the US state of Washington in the past few weeks, wildlife officials say.

Anti-matter set for gravity test [Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:23:49 GMT]
Researchers prepare pairs of matter and anti-matter particles in a bid to finally resolve whether anti-matter repels normal matter in a kind of "anti-gravity".

Communities to 'appraise' nature [Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:59:40 GMT]
Communities could be encouraged to make their own assessments of the direct benefits they get from nature.

Planting push for jubilee woods [Fri, 27 Jan 2012 04:17:21 GMT]
Organisers of a prject to create a series of new woods to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee hope to plant one million trees in one month.

Babies' brains 'show autism risk' [Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:01:45 GMT]
It may be possible to detect autism at a much earlier age than previously thought, say researchers.

Top spots for garden birdwatch [Fri, 27 Jan 2012 04:24:52 GMT]
Some of the beautiful birds to look out for to help assess the status of the nation's feathered friends during this year's big garden birdwatch.

Pictures: Fantastic new images of Mars [Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:16:31 GMT]
New images of the Red Planet's diverse landscapes

'Invisibility cloak' breakthrough [Thu, 26 Jan 2012 03:25:50 GMT]
For the first time researchers achieve the "cloaking" of a three-dimensional object to make it invisible as viewed from any angle.

App Development

LibreOffice Stabilizes []
From the blogs: : Document Foundation proved this week that it's not just a fork in the road for OpenOffice - it's a new direction.

Couchbase Improves NoSQL Performance []
CouchDB open source NoSQL database get a major tech infusion geared around speed.

Mozilla Accelerates HTTP in Firefox 5 []
From the blogs: Being SPDY, isn't about embracing Google, sometimes it's just about being smart with HTTP.

ActiveState Expands Perl Cloud Tech []
Perl cloud vendor run by a 15 year old entrepreneur gets snapped up.

Varnish Cache 3.0 Gets Modular []
New release of popular open source caching technology adds modules and streaming support.