October 2004
16 posts
Random Noise Part 2
Jon Stewart on Crossfire - get it via Bittorrent or IFILM. The following Daily Show (IFILM) and some sort of response from the crossfire guys. The Bowtie journalist (as I will hence-forth refer to Tucker Carlson) was stupid enough to try to make fun of a professional comedian (the best since Jerry Seinfeld retired). The result? He made an ass of himself on international TV.
Jabber for MSN...
Which File Extension are You?
Which File Extension are You?
Magnatune
Magnatune (via Doug Kaye, previous post), from their webpage:
We’re a record label. But we’re not evil. We call it “try before you buy.” It’s the shareware model applied to music. Listen to 326 complete MP3 albums we’ve picked (not 30 second snippets). We let the music sell itself, because we think that’s the best way to get you excited by it. Our...
The Da Vinci Code
When I first heard of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code I assumed it was just another over hyped thriller with the same old dynamics and a rehashed story. This weekend I was happy to be proven wrong. I’m used to seeing right thru a plot long before it begins to unfold and this book was no exception (for the most part). What was indeed exceptional was the pace at which the story progressed...
led pr0n
This post is rated X. (Via Adam)
Delicious Usefulness
When I began to use del.icio.us its usefulness was somewhat limited. I had Firefox’s Bookmarks Synchronizer Extension and I also had them stored in HTML online. I figured I could use del.icio.us for pages I found useful but not worthy of being in my firefox bookmarks or just as a temporary bookmark until I had a chance to better evaluate the page. More recently I started using them for my...
Desktop Search Wars
The Desktop Search Wars are coming. For now, it is mainly a windows war but that is likely to change in the next 6 to 12 months. Google is the uncontested loser in technical terms tough it seems to wining in terms of popularity. Me? I’ve chosen Copernic Desktop Search. Unlike GDS, it can read PDFs - given the fact that the majority of documents I have are in the PDF format you can understand...
Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars
I’m sitting here typing this, listening to Aeryn’s Funeral Theme - it somehow seems appropriate. I was amazed by this miniseries; Farscape was one of the best series ever, the miniseries had to live up to a high standard. And it did. In fact, in some ways, it even outdid the series. I can’t get the scene were the command carriers emerge from the asteroid field of my mind. Or...
Dual Monitor
I just plugged in my old CRT monitor in a dualview mode. I had the idea to do this ever since I had this extra monitor lying around but I finally got to it when I saw this article. I placed my feedreader in the second monitor and firefox in the first. When I click on a link in the feedreader it opens a new background tab in firefox, courtesy of my favorite mozilla extension: Tabbrowser...
Automatic Document Classification
I’ve been having trouble organizing and finding almost anything in my ‘Docs’ directory and I was looking for something to do in python since I started learning it. Automatic document classification using Naive Bayesian classification seems like the ideal project. A tool to solve this problem will need to read TXTs, PDFs, PSs, HTMLs (single and multiple pages), CHMs, MS Office...
Google Desktop Search
I tried to use google’s latest tool yesterday but indexing takes so long I decided to leave it indexing this morning while I’m here at FEUP. I’ve already been told blinkx is a lot better tough I haven’t tried it either.
Random Noise
Cherry OS might be the best thing that has happened to Mac OS since BSD, if it manages to deliver (/.).
And while we’re on the topic, who needs .Mac when you can have google? You get webmail without ads (at least for now…) or with tolerable and sometimes even useful text ads, good interface and functionality (searching, filters, labels, importing contacts from various sources),...
EU invests in Grid Computing
Money put to good use if you ask me. One of the projects that will receive funding from the EU is NextGRID which addresses grid computing greatest problems. NextGRID will seek architectural solutions that streamline all aspects of Grid operation: installation and maintenance of the infrastructure, development and deployment of Grid applications, user orchestration of the resulting resources, and...
The Car of The Future
Forget about KITT. If renault has its way, the car of the future will be more like KITT’s arch-enemy, CARR. But what really scares the hell out of me is that some (obviously insane) people think it’s a good idea to put Microsoft Windows in control of a car.
The GDI Mess
Even if microsoft’s scanner at windowsupdate tells you that you’re safe you should run GDI Scan. Read this forum post too (thanks to Jon Udell). Here’s the results from my first run: Scanning Drive C:… C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE11\MSO.DLL Version: 11.0.5606.0 C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VGX\vgx.dll Version: 6.0.2900.2180...
Bad Luck, Pen Drives & Passwords
My motherboard decided to die on me so I was left without my desktop PC. No biggie, I still had my laptop. Unfortunately, its hard drive had other plans. Oh well, I still have access to various computers both at Chefax and at FEUP. And one thing all those computers have in common: USB ports for me to plug my pen drive. I don’t just carry data in it: - Portable Firefox (with all the...
