1.21 Gigawatts!

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Last night I heard from my mom that my dog which I’ve had since I was 13 is on his way out. I’m pretty sure he’s got arthritis (even though he would never admit to it) and he’s got lumps forming on his chest. I suggested to her that she take him to the vet to get an expert opinion, but I know he’s not going to come back. My dad is probably acting like he’s happy the old mutt is finally going to stop digging holes in his garden, but he can’t fool me. I’ve seen him feed old yeller snacks when he thought nobody was looking.

Which begs the question - is he going to end up in that large garden up in the sky where he can dig holes and bury bones half-assedly to his heart’s content? I really hope so. I couldn’t have asked for a more loyal dog. Every time I brought a girl home he would either stand between her and I or he would stare at me with contempt in his eyes as if he were asking me “Why? Am I not good enough for you?”. He’s a class act. He’s 91, but he can still outrun me. I am 182 (in dog years) after all. At least.

Over the past 7 years I haven’t seen too much of him, just during the monthly visit to my parent’s house. Each time I arrived he’d be standing at the gate, anxiously awaiting my arrival after my mom told him that I’d be arriving soon. I’d always end up taking a bit of him home with me after each visit, seeing as he’d plaster shit around my car during the few hours I’d be there. It’s like he stored it up, anxiously awaiting me to grace his lawn with my transportation device - finally allowing him to relax his asshole. Maybe that’s why he was always so glad to see me… hmm.

I’m gonna miss you buddy. Hopefully you’ll still be around when I next get a chance to come through.

Edit: 26/02/08: He’s actually still alive. And moderately healthy. Thanks for caring.

I’ve been reading a thread on the SomethingAwful Forums about Least well thought-out security measures (sic) and came across this beauty (141kB .gif). I miss the old days of senselessly bypassing lock down programs on school computers and making the teachers angry. And then pointing the finger at other people of course.

Thanks to the 7 people who regularly come back to check for new content. I’ll try pick it up soon-ish.

The name “TiddlyWiki” is very non-descriptive, so I’ll save you the trouble of wondering about it any further. TiddlyWiki is a reusable notepad that edits like a wiki website, meaning that content can be added to it from within the browser that you are viewing it from.

TiddlyWiki likens itself with Google Notes. The only reason I’d prefer Google Notes is the fact that you can access your Google Notes from anywhere with an internet connection.

It consists of a single .html file which you access from within your browser, allowing you to edit it on the fly. You can post it on the web for other people to see but they won’t be able to edit it. The javascript that TiddlyWiki utilises requires the file to be opened on the local computer before it is editable. I found minitiddlyserver which allows you to edit and save your tiddlywiki to an online location. All you need is hosted webspace with access to PHP 5.1 or greater.

TiddlyWiki becomes very useful when used in conjunction with the tiddlysnip FireFox add on, allowing you to add selected text to your wiki at the right-click of a button.

Lithium Ion batteries are everywhere these days. Cellphones, Notebooks, iPods, PDAs etc. Even though we’ve come a long way from NiCd batteries which built up memories, Li-ion batteries however, are still susceptible to losing their chutzpah. Li-ion batteries are generally good for 300-500 charge/discharge cycles (2-3 years), and it’s not a good idea to let them discharge completely. I find this fact particularly interesting because 90% of people at electronic stores have told me to only recharge a battery once it has fully discharged. This might have been the case with NiCd batteries but is not applicable to the Li-ion batteries used in our electrical devices today.

According to batteryuniversity.com, for example, a worst case scenario is when using a notebook plugged into an AC socket with it’s battery fully charged. The problem comes in with the amount of heat the battery is subjected to, as heat decreases it’s lifespan. I’d suggest removing the battery when you’re working off an AC socket.

A Li-ion battery should also never be stored when it’s fully discharged. Apparently the best charge to keep a battery stored at is around 40% (how manufacturers ship the batteries). So to be safe, apply a charge to the battery before storing it, and charge fully before use.

Read the rest of this entry »

I received this picture today showing what happens when an application crashes in KDE4. Clearly it uses Beryl to make the pretty, but I have to be honest - if I was working on something and the application happened to crash, literally showing me what happened to x hours of work, I’d probably hang myself.

edit 05-06-2007: As a reader pointed out, KDE4 uses KWin Composite, and not Beryl.
edit 06-06-2007: Wesley from ubuntu-nl points out that this is merely a mockup, and not yet available in KWin. I guess KDE4 applications will crash beautifully, someday.

The Last Stand

They say a picture says a thousand words. This one says zombie zombie zombie zombie zombie zombie zombie zombie zombie zombie zombie zombie zombie zombie zombie zombie. Addictive game. Gets real hard around day 20.

Boomshine

Psychedelic colours? Check. Soothing Music? Check. Embolism from frustrating game play? Check. If you end up putting enough thought into placing your single chain-reacting dot then you might end up not getting frustrated by this game. If you end up getting past the “get 55 out of 60” dots level then email me to win a free membership to this site!

Google Gears is a browser extension for Firefox and Internet Explorer that uses JavaScript to store application resources and databases locally on your computer to allow you to view those websites when you (or they) are offline.

Gears consists out of:

* A local server, to cache and serve application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.) without needing to contact a server
* A database, to store and access data from within the browser
* A worker thread pool, to make web applications more responsive by performing expensive operations in the background

The only thing is that sites need to be set up specifically to be compatible with Google Gears. The main market for this extension is most likely large sites that offer access to huge datasets and their clients who directly interface with these sites on a large scale, or it can be used to just download part of a website that you would need access to while travelling abroad.

A Gears tutorial is available here and some sample applications can be found here.

Google Gears is compatible with Windows XP (and higher), Linux and MacOS X, running Firefox 1.5 or higher.

edit: 02-06-0-2007 Google Reader now makes use of Google Gears. Very handy indeed.

Core Force Firewall

CORE FORCE provides inbound and outbound stateful packet filtering for TCP/IP protocols using a Windows port of OpenBSD’s PF firewall, granular file system and registry access control and programs’ integrity validation. These capabilities can be configured and enforced system-wide or on a per-application basis for specific programs such as email readers, Web browsers, media players, messaging software, etc.

While I usually rely on routers for my firewall needs, having a program like this around has it’s benefits as well. The most useful part I found is the ability to block specific programs from sending or receiving data from the net. From what I can remember, you should start off with relaxed security settings. Selecting maximum security settings while not knowing exactly what you’re doing will end up blocking all legitimate traffic.

Launchy

Launchy is pretty good at what it does. You load this tiny app, it sits in the background indexing the files on your hard drive, including but not limited to: documents, mp3s, pictures, shortcuts, etc. You can specify what it must index, so you don’t have to worry about any sensitive information coming up accidentally.

Colibri
Colibri is similar to the app above, but I like it more for some reason. Launchy seems to have improved a lot since I used it a few months ago, but at the time Colibri felt more “solid”. As with pretty much anything, you’re going to have to make up your mind since personal preferences play a big part in these types of software.

The point of Colibri/Launchy is to make the Start Menu obsolete. Once it has indexed the start menu, you run Colibri with ctrl-space and start typing the name of the application you want to run. After using this app for a few days, you will wonder how you ever got around without it.

WinDirStat

Ever wonder what happened to all your hard drive space? Use this program to get a statistical and graphical view of directories listed by folder size. Click for screenshot.

Uninstall Tool
Although this package isn’t free, it’s worth a mention. I discovered it while scouring the net for useful utilities and it is really a pleasure to work with. It replaces the standard Windows Add/Remove Programs control panel utility and it much more informative and very fast. It’s a 30 day trial, but honestly, how much time do you devote to uninstalling programs?

Hamachi
Your own personal Virtual Private Network that allows you to link in with friends and groups to securely share files and play games like you would do over a regular network, but over the internet. Sound fantastic? I thought so too.

Sysinternals Defrag
If you’ve ever used any of Sysinternals’ utilities before, you would agree that the quality of their programs is absolutely amazing. Their “defragger” called Contig is a command line utility you can use to defrag single files, directories or an entire disk. Now, I’m not much for command line utilities on Windows, so you can grab a free GUI for contig here. Just put the contig.exe file in the same directory as the GUI’s .exe and you’re set to go. I recommend that you always do a chkdsk or a scandisk prior to running defragging utilities if you value your data at all.

Netlimiter
If you’re worried about where your bandwidth is going, grab Netlimiter Lite. It’s a free bandwidth monitor that logs all traffic coming in and going out of your PC. It keeps reports on a daily, monthly and yearly basis as well. When you have the utility open you can actually see which program is using bandwidth, so if there’s a background process downloading something from the net, you are able to pick up on it.

If you don’t mind forking out a bit of cash, you can try the pay-for versions of Netlimiter which include the ability to block certain programs from sending/receiving data, and even to throttle the amount of bandwidth available to them. Really an amazing utility to have.

That’s it for this free software roundup. Be sure to check back every now and then for more posts about free utilities.

Yes, free. If you are an aspiring programmer without the millions of dollars available for software development tool licensing fees, then these Express editions might give you that nudge in the right direction. Anything from Visual C++ to SQL Server is available at your disposal. I think the worst thing you have to do is accept the EULA.

The files download as .ISO files, which can in turn be extracted with WinRAR

Also, if you’re thinking if going the C++ route, please check out Thinking in C++ 2nd Edition by Bruce Eckel. An amazing introduction to the world of making your computer see things through your eyes.