Dreams Unlimited©

Diary

archives

A list of recent thoughts, things I saw or things I spotted on the Net, things that excite me (Uuh, baby!) or upset me, stuff I hate or love or in any other way find worth the trouble of blogging right here for your entertainment or interest and my archive. ;)

	Friday, October 31 Bad news #Posted by Dreams on 16:48 Sad Halloween... bad news I'm afraid... I will loose my job at the end of November. :( Although I was doing much better as a Patent Examiner, I am not the right material. Both my boss and my coach have that impression. And you know what: They are right. :( Sad but true. If I do what it takes, I'll be bored (at best) or go insane (most likely). So no matter how hard it is, it's better I quit now. Rather than get an extension, sweat myself to despait trying to get enough files in and make it, only to discover a few years (at the longest) later that I shouldn't be doing this after all. Good news, though, is that there is a REALLY cool job opening up in IS and I'd be perfect for that. :D So keep the fingers crossed... x\|x
	Interesting, isn't it? #Posted by Dreams on 14:44 3D17.org: "People often talk to communities, but how do communities talk back? 3D17.org aims to answer that question by allowing a large number of people to collaboratively create some text, be it a letter, fax, or email. Have you ever thought what kind of letter the combined intelligence of 1,000 people might produce to support your opinion? 3D17 will answer that question."
	Big Bang sounded like a deep hum #Posted by Dreams on 14:40 New Scientist reports: "Physicist John Cramer of the University of Washington in Seattle has created audio files of the event which can be played on a PC. 'The sound is rather like a large jet plane flying 100 feet above your house in the middle of the night,' he says. Cramer was prompted to recreate the din last heard 13.7 billion years ago by an 11-year-old boy who wanted to know what the Big Bang sounded like for a school project". Read the article to find out why and how they were able to recreate of it must have sounded like, even though the universe is vacuum and your shouldn't hear anything...
	Thursday, October 30 Barebones #Posted by Dreams on 13:53 Don't know what barebones are? What about Small Form Factor? That mean anything in relation to computers... if not, read the SFF TECH review of just about every manufacturer currently out there! The MSI, the Shuttle, the Iwill, the ASUS and even Dell is said to enter the barebone realm. :respect: to the author of this piece.
	W3C says US patent should be revoked: it's not new (morons)! #Posted by Dreams on 13:48 (Source: Slashdot) "Acting on the advice of the W3C HTML Patent Advisory Group, W3C has presented the United States Patent and Trademark Office with prior art establishing that US Patent No. 5,838,906 (the '906 patent) is invalid. W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee has written an unprecedented request to U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property James E. Rogan to take action to remove the patent to allow operation of the Web." They even provide the USPTO with detailed information... sweet!It seems the patent threatens the existence of a browser... Duuh!
	Optical CPU to fly at 8 trillion ops, Lenslet claims #Posted by Dreams on 13:37 "Lenslet has developed an optical DSP that can perform eight trillion operations per second. And, according to the Reuters report, when Lenslet releases its Enlight processor in a matter of weeks, a unit using the technology will be 1.7 centimetres high and measure 15 by 15 centimetres." This 1000x faster than any other current DSP (Digital Signal Processor). These are used to encode/decode digital audio and video or perform really fast Fourier Transforms (remember those?) used in the industry. Digital X-rays, modelling chemical reactions, simulations, etc. So this is BIG news!!! :drool:
	NASA's Earth Observatory #Posted by Dreams on 13:23 The NASA has a newsroom where they are pretty quick to catch up on current news events. You can see beautiful shots from space of the wildfires, for instance. But also some from the huge eruption on the Sun, a few days ago. Best thing, they also explain the technology very well, in lay-man's terms: "Today?s flare is listed as an X17.2, with an X20 being the most intense flare ever observed in that time. People living in Quebec, Canada, may recall that in March 1989 an X15 solar storm was strong enough to knock out the region?s power grid." Check out the rest of the Earth Observatory, there's anough material there for one year of Discovery... at least!
	Wednesday, October 29 smugmug - Peet : Sunrise with fog #Posted by Dreams on 14:34 Petra captured a beautiful sunrise with fog with yesterday... :K My guess, somewhere around 07:45 or so... Such a romantic picture...
	Foveon - X3 Technology #Posted by Dreams on 14:08 (Source: Martin) Here is the site with the creators of the cool 3-in-1 CCD used in tomorrow's digicams: Foveon - X3 Technology. I talked about the new Sigma digicam using it. Read the easy to understand article on Why X3 is Better. :)
	Humungeous Glas Explosion... on the Sun #Posted by Dreams on 13:59 The SOHO satellite reported that Active region 10486, already under close scrutiny by several instruments on SOHO and other satellites, as well as numerous ground observatories, played up a spectacular show in the morning on Tuesday 28 October 2003. An X 17.2 flare, the second largest flare ever observed by SOHO, was setting off a strong high energy proton event and a fast-moving Coronal Mass Ejection." Watch for beautiful Aurora images in October and possibly early November this year! Wish I lived near there... B)
	Tuesday, October 28 Flyblogged #Posted by Dreams on 17:42 (Source: Slashdot) BBC reports of How spammers are targeting blogs: "It felt like the digital equivalent of flyposting - coming home one day to find your windows covered with posters for dodgy clubs and bands you have never head of. Although the term flyblog has been used already to mean either blogging about flying, or blogging while flying, I would like to claim it for the practice of posting spam comments to people's blogs like this: I have just been comprehensively flyblogged. " Spammers now start to use people's commenting system for posting their SPAM messages... OMG! The friggin nerve these people have. I guess I'm gonna write to Haloscan that they implement some kind of JunkBuster, Blackhole or Baysian filter in their system... quickly too!
	lamp: Library Access to Music Project #Posted by Dreams on 17:14 Copying music digitally and broadcasting it (digitally) is illegal because it infringes with copyright laws, world-wide. But recording a song from the radio and sharing that with your friends (world-wide) is okay. The radio is analog and quality is bad, even if recorded digitally. Reproducing it makes it even worse and no one bothers about it too much. So what about digitally ripping 1000s of CDs and broadcasting them over campus... using an analog cable TV network? How about that? That's what MIT students were also wondering and what led them to build lamp: Library Access to Music Project. A music TV channel network, which lets 16 students control one channel for upto 80 minutes, while others request songs or simply listen to it. Brilliant!!! :respect:So cool! B) Read the technical and legal aspects of this system (easy to read).
	Chronicle Lite, The Blogger.com client for all platforms #Posted by Dreams on 15:08 Chronicle Lite uses the Blogger API to communicate with a server so if your server speaks the Blogger API, Chronicle Lite will probably talk to it. In other words, run a local tool and use it blog instead of going to the web or using BlogThis! bookmarklets... Kinda cool! Supports several blogs too!
	Daypop - a current events/weblog/news search engine #Posted by Dreams on 14:44 The Blogosphere consists of millions of bloggers out there, updating their blogs regularly. Since we all read similar sites, article and each others' blogs, there is a limited amount of news articles and items that make it as "breaking news" on these blogs. That's where DAYPOP comes in. It lists the Top 40 links as seens on included blogs, the Top News stories that bloggers link to and popular words in the blogosphere. :) It's a cool site for a peek to currents events.
	Sony Cybershot DSC-U40 #Posted by Dreams on 09:34 DPreview reports of the new Sony DSC-U40. It's the latest in this series to complement the old U10 (1 Mpx) and U20 (2 Mpx), the newer U30 and waterproof U60 and twisty U50 (all 2 Mpx). The U40 looks good to me from the specs they gave. I am an avid user of the old U20 and mainly hate the low-light limitations as well as the barebone software and menus. The U40 promisses to improve this, by including pre-flash metering, extra scene modes and white balance correction. "Expected in January 2004 for about $200, the stylish U40 camera will come in four colors (silver, black, dark blue and red) that match your mood or your outfit.Slide the front cover sideways and the two-megapixel (2 Mpx) camera comes to life in under one second."
	Monday, October 27 intraVnews #Posted by Dreams on 20:54 "intraVnews is an addictive add-in for Microsoft Outlook that turns your favorite email application into an advanced RSS news reader and aggregator. Scan hundreds of new feeds in minutes." Finally something really good comes to Outlook... Why use feedster if you can have this? If someone tries it, please let me know!
	Sigma SD10 Hands-On Preview #Posted by Dreams on 17:45 Dpreview also (of course) has a preview of the Sigma SD10, but Imaging Resource is more extensive (so far). I'm sure DPreview will post a more extensive review sooner or later.
	Sigma SD10 Digital Camera Review #Posted by Dreams on 17:40 Imaging Resource (extensively) reports of the new Sigma SD10 Digital SLR, the successor to the SD9. It uses an improved Foveon CCD with three layers (one for red, green and blue) to build an image from three channels. Micro-mirrors above each pixel provide extra sharpness and sensitivity. In the SD10, the ISO range has been improved and image noise is reduced, but as much as with the Canon 10D. Also many new feature in the firmware that allow better customization of settings for more experienced photographers. Also, the low-light conditions have been improved both in terms of image quality as in focus speed. (Updated: fixed some errors, thanks Martin.)
	HotPixels Eliminator #Posted by Dreams on 13:49 (Source: PartyFlock) "Hot pixels are part of the CCD reality. Each CCD has millions of pixels sensitive to brightness. These pixels are never the same and each of them has different charge leakage rate.If you expose the CCD long enough, the pixels thanks to this leakage will simply lighten up even with no light." Enter the HotPixels Eliminator and these bright white spots in your didicams pictures are gone! Cool! B) This is my tool of the day!!! :respect:
	Sunday, October 26 Kablog: Updating your blog from your phone, revisited #Posted by Dreams on 21:09 I told my friend Stefan about Kablog, a tool to use a phone or PDA and (natively) update your blog from it. Turns out Stefan has a Nokia 3650 and installed Kablog on it and can now update his Bali-Blog from it! Cool! B) Haha :D Fantastic! He'll use it on his 4 weeks vacation to Bali. between surfing and partying, he'll updat his blog with it! (y)
	Ed Pegg's Math Games - Paterson's Worms Revisited #Posted by Dreams on 20:22 "Worms eat sediment, delineating some sort of path. The 21 November 1969 issue of Science had computer simulations of worms, side by side with images of actual worm trail fossils. The ancient slimetrails enthralled John Conway and Mike Paterson. Mike started drawing algorithmic doodles for worms eating from an isometric grid (sometimes during lectures). His simple rules led to simple patterns for some worms, but many other doodles wound up being decidedly non-simple." This problem, worms eating and wondering what their dietary habbits would look like, should they fossile again, kept people busy for 32 years. As of this month, Benjamin Chaffin (co-designer of the Pentium 4 chip and used to optimization problems and challanges), figured out a way to let the little critters roam and feed for long time and was able to solve all but two of the remaining questions. :respect:
	Ferry Corsten - Right of Way #Posted by Dreams on 19:42 Last night we went to see Ferry Corsten's new 8 hours solo set in Heineken Music Hall. In honor of the world-wide launch of his new album Right of Way, some 6000 people rocked the HMH until 7am, including the extra hour for the time shift... ;) It was excellent! Magnificant place! I was able to shoot some really nice pictures of the hall, the light and the people... I can't wait for Revolution on November 8th!!! :D
	Saturday, October 25 Unity Drugsinfo #Posted by Dreams on 17:37 Unity has a new website... Unity Drugsinfo. Martin made them a new site, modelled partly after his baby project, mrvanes. Site looks cool and barebone, but effective and informative. And that what counts. It is a group that informs teenagers, youth and other party people on parties about the effects of drugs. The dangers, risks and depencies. They don't want to (necessarily) talk people out of it, as long as their well informed of what their doing. That usually results in people using/abusing less drugs.
	KABLOG #Posted by Dreams on 16:23 KABLOG: "KABLOG is a tool for mobile phones and PDAs that allows you to post new blog entries to blog servers such as Movable Type, blogger, B2, Blog-City, UserLand (Radio), Roller, SnipSnap, and other blog servers that support either the simple blogger xmlrpc interface or the extended metaWeblog interface. In addition, KABLOG provides extended support for posting entries to Movable Type." Blog support for PalmOS, J2ME phones (like Nokia 3650) as well as Symbian OS device... Coool! B)
	Friday, October 24 Study on the Effects of Spam on End Users #Posted by Dreams on 16:09 (Source: Slashdot) Pew Internet & American Life Project reports: "In large numbers, Internet users report that they trust email less and some even use email less because of spam. Why? Users worry that the growing volume of spam is getting in the way of their ability to reliably send and receive email. They complain that it uncontrollably clutters their inboxes and imposes uninvited, deceptive, and often disgustingly offensive messages. Here are the key figures"
	Netcraft: Sustained DDoS Wobble Prominent Weblogs #Posted by Dreams on 14:00 Internet users have done a DDoS to weblogs hosts these past few days... The bastards! Appearantly because terrorist and anti-terrorist groups have ideas about offensive content being hosted there... sigh
	First snow flakes! #Posted by Dreams on 09:44 I saw the first snow flakes today!!! Woohoo! I'm sooo psyched for winter! Can't wait for a foot of snow! Getting my bike and just sliding all over the place! making slides on sidewalks... hehe :devil: That'll teach 'em! LOL :D Snowball fights... finding someone with a dog and just driving them crazy in the snow (Dogs love the snow, perhaps I was one in a previous life or so...) :S
	Thursday, October 23 It had to happen sooner rather than later... #Posted by Dreams on 16:24 LG Electronics unveils world's first multi-function smart PDA phone with a 1.1 million pixel built-in camera. It has an Intel 400Mhz Xscale processor, 192MB RAM, IrDA and USB ports, a 2.8 inch 262,000 color TFT LCD, including video, photo editing and mailing, MMS, GPS, video and MP3 playback. There's also a memory slot, although it doesn't say which one. I except SD/xD/MMS.
	PC down #Posted by Dreams on 14:14 R.I.P.... my PC at home is dead or at least, in a very deep coma. :( When I turned it off on Sunday or Monday, the fan had been making terrible noises, rattling and growling and whining at turns. It seemed better not to push my luck, so I turned it off. However, last night, when I came home from the volleyball match and Petra wanted to quickly upload the pictures... the PC turned itself back off, whenever you'd turn it on. A quick whine, lots of rattling and that was it. It's so fast, that even the monitor doesn't have time to switch on. I guess my fan(s) is(are) broken... shoudl be easy enough to fix but I need to make the time first.
	World Solar Challenge #Posted by Dreams on 13:49 The TU Delft team, that built the Nuna II, has again won the World Solar Challenge. Their new car improved their old time by almost 2 hours over the 3010km distance from Darwin to Adelaide. the car reached an average speed of 97 km/h (up from 91) and reached a top speed of 160 km/h!
	EPO Volleyball match #Posted by Dreams on 11:47 I joined the EPO Volleyball team a couple of months ago and we also joined the recreational poul this season. So we get to play some matches outside of people we know and also travel to other clubs. Last night, I had to play a volleyball match at home. So I invited Petra too and asked her if she could borrow a good digicam somewhere and take pictures. The results are pretty good! She had a nice Canon 10D with a super duper lens. :K Goes to show that size does matter! ;)
	Wednesday, October 22 Building the Ultimate High-End Gaming Workstation #Posted by Dreams on 17:46 Want to do work and play the latest computer games but don't want two machines to do it on? Read the article on how to build an Ultimate High-End Gaming Workstation.
	ENUM #Posted by Dreams on 17:43 ENUM.ORG " ENUM (RFC 2916) is the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) protocol that will assist in the convergence of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and the IP network; it is the mapping of a telephone number from the PSTN to Internet services--telephone number in, URL out. ENUM was developed as a solution to the question of how to find services on the Internet using only a telephone number, and how telephones, which have an input mechanism limited to twelve keys on a keypad, can be used to access Internet services."
	Name That Blog #Posted by Dreams on 17:37 "Thanks for your interest! Your site has been added to Name That Blog!. If you have any questions or problems, let me know! Also, if you're interested in sponsoring Name That Blog, visit our site to find out how. Thanks again for your interest!" This is kinda cool... they list posts from your blog on zjeir site and people can guess from which blog it's from. It'll be hard to do with mine of course, but it's a way to get exposure... ;)
	Europeans Still Battling Software Patents #Posted by Dreams on 17:24 Slashdot has another good pointer to infor on the upcoming Software Patents in Europe debate. On November 10th, the EU will hold a meeting on this. However, the Competitiveness Council could overthrow all of this talk with votes for more competition and they want to do it by opening the market and granting software patents... Read the article for the whole story!
	My LomoBlog #Posted by Dreams on 10:59 Just created this too... My Lomo.Home
	Boom Chicago & Lomography #Posted by Dreams on 10:47 As a birthday present, Petra treated me to a dinner and show at Boom Chicago, an American settlement in the middle of Amsterdam's Leidseplein. Just a couple of Theatre Sports people from Chicago that have turned into comedy professionals. It's a mix between stand-up, improv and scripted shorts, but the mix of Dutch weirdness with American overkill is addictive. :) I've been there 5 times already and it's always great! Petra also got me a lomo camera... if you don't know what that it, check out lomography.com and figure it out. Better yet, get a camera! They're absolutely unlike anything you know, very cheap, take normal film, look totally cool and produce results you simply don't understand! I'll develop my first roll soon... sooo pshyched!!! :D
	Tuesday, October 21 Sony Ericsson - P900 #Posted by Dreams on 13:51 The Sony Ericsson - P900 has been officially launched! Just in time after the Handspring Treo 600. :) It looks very similar in features. It has a video camera, PDA functionality, a 65K display, great gaming possibilties. Plays images, video files and mp3 audio, you can check your Email or send SMS/MMS messages. And best of all, it uses Symbian OS! It's like Palm OS, but different...
	Monday, October 20 416 Blonde Jokes Index #Posted by Dreams on 23:08 416 Blonde Jokes should be enough to keep you busy for a little while... ROFL
	Handspring Treo 600 - First Impressions #Posted by Dreams on 22:37 AlexKing has already received his Treo 600 and has posted pictures, a comparison with the Treo 300 as well as an in-depth review first hand of this new and coolest PDA/phone combination aka smartphone and XDA aka Iwantoneofthosethingymadgingies!
	MO Storage Means Mo Safety #Posted by Dreams on 22:33 In case you haven't heard that manufacturers of DVDs and CDs have been sloppy on quality, resulting in loss of data from your CD backup copies in less than 2 years (worst cases)... read the review of Tom's Hardware on MO Storage: "Magneto-optical drives may save the day. An intelligent recording procedure allows data to be saved, even with frequent use, more safely than on hard drives, CDs or DVDs." The idea is the same, but the technolgy is old and mature and solid as a rock. 10-15 years guaranteed. You may want to rethink your backup strategy...
	Ars Technica: Apple's iTunes Music Store: dissed by Microsoft, breakin' some machines, and facing challenges - Page 1 - (10/2003) #Posted by Dreams on 22:28 Ars Technica reviews Apple's iTunes for Windows: "Read on for my take on the challenges Apple faces now that Windows support is out the door." If you have been eagerly awaiting this, please read the review and decide again... it may be smart to wait a little. Or at least wait until you have made backup copies of your important stuff! Don't say I didn't warn you!!!
	Old costums and dresses from middle ages #Posted by Dreams on 22:21 Petra's sister, Marleen, has posed for a friend of her who has the weird but fascinating hobby of replicating old ancient dresses from way back when, using paintings etc as an example. Marleen has pictures of them wearing these dresses, including names of the people who originally wore the dresses. Wow! Impressive, both the pictures and to realise that someone not unlike you or me actually made these dresses. :)
	Sunday, October 19 LightZone #Posted by Dreams on 01:22 LightZone: "Petra's Photography Blog" Yup, she finally did it... :)
	Saturday, October 18 Kids Play Our Computer Games #Posted by Dreams on 13:29 "Brian: What's this supposed to be? EGM: Football. It's one of the first great portable games. Brian: I thought it was Run Away From the Dots." ROFL If you ever played any of the classic computer games of our time, Pong, Breakout, Donkey Kong, etc. You HAVE to read this article where they let kids play for free and recorded their comments. Hilaaarious! :D (y)
	Friday, October 17 Hack Furby #Posted by Dreams on 11:09 Hack Furby: "HackFurby is a site devoted to investigating the geek-appeal of the Furby toy. The primary goal of HackFurby was to fully document the Furby IR protocol." BRILLIANT! Check out the hints and diagrams. With a bit of soldering your good ol' Furby can do cool stuff he'd never have imagined! Kay maymay unay!
	Adding Google to the Mozilla Search Sidebar #Posted by Dreams on 11:03 If you have Mozilla, you know you can simply enter a search statement in the location (URL) bar and hit the down arrow followed by enter? Right? I use it all the time, extremely addicting. Just learned many other tricks, like adding a Mozilla SideBar (try hitting F9!)... Anway, read on: Google on Mozilla Sidebar
	Thursday, October 16 Rob and Isabelle's Wedding Pictures #Posted by Dreams on 16:34 Isa uploaded some (or all) of the pictures that were taken on their wedding day. There're about 150 pics or so, so sit back and relex, grab a cup of coffee and take a trip down memory lane. You may even see people or things that you missed on that day... :) smugmug - Rob, Isabelle, Elise : Our Wedding day!
	Tuesday, October 14 X P R I Z E #Posted by Dreams on 08:39 This is unbelievable! Have you seen the X P R I Z E? Well read up: "The X PRIZE is a $10,000,000 prize to jumpstart the space tourism industry through competition between the most talented entrepreneurs and rocket experts in the world. The $10 Million cash prize will be awarded to the first team that: Privately finances, builds & launches a spaceship, able to carry three people to 100 kilometers (62.5 miles) Returns safely to Earth Repeats the launch with the same ship within 2 weeks" These people are serious!!!
	Sunday, October 12 Healthy call phone emissions #Posted by Dreams on 16:38 Wired reports that some parents are sueing a highschool for exposing their kids to the radiation of WiFi networks that are present in the school... As Iphtashu Fitz said: "I would never have guessed that the emissions from a wireless network are bad, unlike the healthy emissions given off by the now inescapable cell phones that are everywhere in public." Read the entire complaint (PDF) on wifinetnews.com
	Anti-spam fighting techniques - This Time It's Personal #Posted by Dreams on 16:10 (Source: Slashdot) Paul Graham has some very good articles on spam and the progress we're making so far. "Bayesian filters are now common enough that we're starting to see spams designed specifically to get past them. So far these tricks aren't working. My filtering rate is still over 99.7%, and Brian Burton reports an astonishing 99.9% with his multi-word Bayesian SpamProbe." But he also explains how spammers work and how Baysian filter couteract them. Then he presents some ideas for the future, for instance, the filters that spider back to links presented in the messages, which could result in a massive DOS attack on the spammers themselves. Coool! :) I'm definitly in for that! In short, the articles are worth the read!
	Handspring: Treo 600 smartphones #Posted by Dreams on 15:27 Finally, a smartphone that looks as if I could even use it! :) The Handspring Treo 600 is a PDA and a phone in one. It's a phone running Palm OS, a color 640x480 screen, GSM/GPRS capabilities to enhance (POP) Email and surfing (coool) and a digicam. You can can check your calendar while talking on the phone, dial directly from the contacts list, or take a picture and email it to a friend (MMS ready). :) Great! It's also not too big (see the picture), roughly twice a Nokia 6310i side-by-side. Of course, it's too big for your pants' pocket. But you don't take your filofax or SuccesAgenda either. :) It houses an SD/MMC memory slot, and considering these were just uped to 1GB, that should be platy of room for your mp3s too! The 144MHz ARM and 32MB of RAM are plenty for the PalmOS so things should zip along quite nicely. The only thing missing would have to be either a second SD slot or built-in Bluetooth, so you could phone hands-free. :(
	Applications: As The Blogs Churn #Posted by Dreams on 14:59 (Source: Coworking) There is another interesting research article on blogs and their lifespan... Applications: As The Blogs Churn: "The disparity between the Perseus research and NITLE's figures apparently lies in the type of blogs that were analyzed. The Perseus survey analyzed the estimated 4.12 million sites that have been created on blog-hosting services, such as Blog-City, BlogSpot, Diaryland, LiveJournal, Pitas, TypePad, Weblogger and Xanga, while the NITLE index includes standalone blogs as well as hosted." There seems to be a big (significant?) difference between people that host their blogs on free servers ad those that pay for them. Free blogs have ease of use, hosted blogs have more tweakability and space. Perhaps the money is an incentive to keep it up...?
	Saturday, October 11 Mozilla 1.4.1 #Posted by Dreams on 14:39 There is a new release for Mozilla, the best and fastest web browser (OK, Opera is faster but still...) Not much changed except bug fixes of course, but the bigest improvement should make it worth upgrading if your office uses a Windows platform. What's New in Mozilla 1.4.1: "Mozilla on Windows now has support for NTLM authentication. This enables Mozilla to talk to MS web and proxy servers that are configured to use 'windows integrated security'"
	Friday, October 10 Smart Mobs #Posted by Dreams on 15:39 (Source: gervis.net) Yet another modern trend or hype... Smart Mobs: "The people who make up smart mobs cooperate in ways never before possible because they carry devices that possess both communication and computing capabilities. Their mobile devices connect them with other information devices in the environment as well as with other people's telephones. Dirt-cheap microprocessors embedded in everything from box tops to shoes are beginning to permeate furniture, buildings, neighborhoods, products with invisible intercommunicating smartifacts. When they connect the tangible objects and places of our daily lives with the Internet, handheld communication media mutate into wearable remote control devices for the physical world."
	Thursday, October 9 The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2003 #Posted by Dreams on 22:14 This week, the The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was announced. "...Through pioneering discoveries concerning the water and ion channels of [human - ed.] cells, this year’s Nobel Laureates Peter Agre and Roderick MacKinnon, have contributed to fundamental chemical knowledge on how cells function. They have opened our eyes to a fantastic family of molecular machines: channels, gates and valves all of which are needed for the cell to function." I used to study Chemistry and did get a Bachelors degree in it, but have largely stopped after that. I focused more on Comp Sci since then. But I still get restless when I see large labs, tubes and burners and boilers everywhere... hmm, cool, brings back memories. So I can't wait to see what the next Nobel Prize Poster by Stichting C3 will look like, when it comes out. I already have 3 of them up in my office.
	Shirky: Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing #Posted by Dreams on 21:47 Shirky writes an interesting article about weblogging called Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing. But he really hits the point: the essence of why blogging or weblogging is done is because it is incredibly easy! You'll be amazed by "the way in which weblogging simplifies the concept of 'Publishing' to the point that not only is it now so simple that anyone can do it, it’s also so simple that there’s no way of making money out of it. Publishing has come to the masses… This idea - of a form of publishing that’s almost completely lacking in barriers and cost - is fundamental to an understanding of weblogging."
	What's the "Scroll Lock" key on my computer for? #Posted by Dreams on 21:33 "Why does my computer keyboard have this 'Scroll Lock' key that seems to serve no purpose whatsoever? In 15 years I don't remember ever pushing that button. I'm almost scared to touch it." LOL I was asking myself that very question not too long ago. I know I used to know what it was for, but couldn't remember. Glad, I read the answer once more. End or recording for Dreams, Personal Log, Stardate 20031009.1
	Jaspan 4...well really 6 #Posted by Dreams on 18:27 So cool! After a long time out of touch, I finally got back into contact with my friend (and ex) Faith again. :) Her mail bounced after a while and I couldn't locate her again. Luckily, she thought of me the other day and did a short search on the Net. There I was! :*D LOL Anyway, she now also has her own home page (Jaspan 4...well really 6) with pictures, because she also got tired of sending pictures to friends and family once the kids were born. great minds think alike, I guess. Glad to be back in touch... (y)
	Pannonica #Posted by Dreams on 18:24 I hadn't been to Pannonica in a while, so I thought it was time to catch up. :) First, I went to see the ComedyTrain in Pannonica on Tuesday. I was gonna go with my friend and colleague Tara. While I was on vacation, she had been fired from EPO and I wanted to catch up. However, in "de zwarte Ruijter", we ran into Marc and Wouter, friends and ex-colleagues from KPN Research in Groningen. So they joined us for dinner and Marc went along to the comedy. :) It was great. There were two comedians and they had sessions of about an hour each. I was expecting 10-15 min stand-up. But this was good too. The first (Micha Wertheim) was not so experienced as the latter, but not less good. He was actually more original. The second one was quicker, funnier and more professional. Nonetheless, we had a blast! :D LOL I made a few pics, but they were bad. Then on wednesday, I was going to go to see Trijntje Oosterhuis again (see last April). I had a 25% discount from the Pannonica mailing list and was going to take Petra. But she's on vacation in Italy :'( and so I took my friend, a musician himself, Marc. Dinner was great. Pannonica is a beautifully restored old house and the kitchen is limited but good and fresh. Then, around 9pm, we went downstairs to get ready for the concert. Trijntje normally plays with band, but this was just her and a pianist. The place was small and packed, so it resulted in an intimate concert and Trijntje was great! Brilliant pianist, great voice and good songs, both old, new and covers from Stevie Wonder. I love her! :) Can't wait for her to come back!
	Wednesday, October 8 Perseus - The Blogging Iceberg #Posted by Dreams on 09:42 (Source: Coworking) Very interesting read! Perseus has done an elaborate survey of blogs. "The most dramatic finding was that 66.0% of surveyed blogs had not been updated in two months, representing 2.72 million blogs that have been either permanently or temporarily abandoned... yet the typical blog is written by a teenage girl who uses it twice a month to update her friends and classmates on happenings in her life." It seems that teenage girls are to most frequent author of blogs. LOL I guess I am not a 36 year old (in two weeks) old male with 3 degrees and I don't update my blog daily! ;)
	Tuesday, October 7 ComedyTrain in Pannonica #Posted by Dreams on 19:02 Tonight, I'm going to see the ComedyTrain in Pannonica! Cool! Last time I went to them was way back in 1999 or so in Groningen. It was very cool then, so I'm psyched for this one. :)
	European Union chooses Dutch draft to tap IP wires #Posted by Dreams on 15:23 According to the Inquirer, the European Union might choose a Dutch de facto standard to tap IP wires. "The Netherlands is at the forefront of legal intercept (LIs), both legally and technically and has performed the most number of publicly documented ones. The Dutch started codifying standards in the late '90s that evolved into the TIIT specifications, a nice tidy package likely to be adapted by the ETSI."
	Email van een mobiele telefoon #Posted by Dreams on 14:54 >--- Begin bericht --- (Update)Cool! I can update my site from my gsm phone by sending an sms! >--- Einde bericht ---
	AMS-IX - Traffic #Posted by Dreams on 13:41 OK, really far off, but I really dig these charts... Here a graph for the Internet traffic of the Netherlands. It's all the cumulative traffic that goes through the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AIX). The dip at 6am is kinda cool. Appearently, 6am really is the time to go to bed because otherwise you run into the morning people again! :)
	Monday, October 6 Migraine may just be a malfunction #Posted by Dreams on 14:09 Suffering from migranes? It seems you are experiencing a simple malfunction! "Captain, she can't take much more... warp core is already at 110%, sir!"
	And they said it couldn't be done... #Posted by Dreams on 13:42 Slashdot reports that "Philips has found a way to burn a dual layered DVD+R. Unlike other dual layered disks that have been developed, this one is also designed to be backwards compatible with current DVD players. Phillips will be demonstrating this new technology at CEATEC this coming week at the DVD+RW alliance booth. The DVDs will hold 8.5GB of data (4 hours of video) and are set to be released as soon as next year." B) Coool! Sounds simple, but I used to think that it couldn't be done. Because you have to focus a laser beam onto one particular layer and that it very tough. But not too tough, it seems! :) :respect:
	Sunday, October 5 smugmug - Rob, Isabelle, Elise's photo galleries #Posted by Dreams on 12:06 Haha, finally, Isa is also smugging! Some of the pictures are already in Rob, Isabelle, Elise's photo gallery. Of course, it takes a little while to get the routine. ;) But you can enjoy the honeymoon pictures from Iceland already. Niiice. Reminds me of Iceland Airwaves, the 4 day music festival in Iceland, october 15th thru 19th. "Since the first show held in 1999 (in an airplane hangar), Iceland Airwaves has become one of the premier showcases for new music ? Icelandic and otherwise ? in the world. It's been called "the most innovative music festival since CMJ" and "as responsible for all of Reykjavík's recent positive press as Björk herself".
	ZANDhap Indestad #Posted by Dreams on 11:03 On October 26th, there's another zand in de stad. This time in the lovely, hip and trendy and delicious (so I'm told) restaurant Noord. It's kinda hidden but it really is 5 min from Den Haag central station... You just gotta wonder around first before you find it. Tip: bring your cell phone. :D
	POPFile - Automatic Email Classification & anti-spam #Posted by Dreams on 10:39 SourceForge listed a couple of cool tools in their bi-monthly newsletter: "POPFile is an email classification tool (read: anti-spam) with a Naive Bayes classifier, a POP3 proxy and a web interface. It runs on most platforms and with most email clients." Runs with Windows and Linux, Outlook and Outlook Express. You need this! "eGroupWare is a multi-user web-based groupware suite written in PHP. Included are modules for Email, Adressbook, Calender, Infolog (Notes, Todo, Phone Calls), CMS, Forum, Bookmarks, Wiki, Knowledgebase, Polls and ...Also included is a powerfull API." You run communities? Or have several loosely formed projects or interest groups at work? Check this out. The API lets you enhance it with existing system that might already have. Copy sounds from DVDs regularly? Convert audio from and to other file formats? Hate MS Media Player but want to support them, if only you could avoid the &%$@@%!& mplayer? If you answered yes to any of these questions, check out Guliverkli! The alternative MPC is worth it alone! :respect:
	TenderCoach #Posted by Dreams on 10:14 A friend of mine, Jessica - whom you know as ZANDhap lady - has a company of her own... She created TenderCoach. It's an advisory company that helps SOHO companies (MKB) to get into tender offers that the governement puts out. It's often unknown for these small companies to get in on this, into this or to know about it. The company itself is work enough and these tender offers are long, cumbersome and tedious with piles of paperwork to be filed out. She can take it out of your hands and into your pockets! :) Sounds like a great idea!
	Friday, October 3 The Awful German Language #Posted by Dreams on 13:44 Here is a link to a really funny written piece by Mark Twain, yes the Mark Twain, about the Aweful German language. It was written in 1880 or so, after Mark tried to master the German language and its peculiarities. Let's just be glad he didn't attempt Dutch. Because they say Dutch is even worse than German. We Dutch think German as a much more structured language than Dutch. Go figure... :D LOL
	Thursday, October 2 Zzzzzzzzzz #Posted by Dreams on 00:05 :yawn: insert smacking mouth noises here :Z :Z :Z g'night all!
	JustBrowsing.nl #Posted by Dreams on 00:02 smugmug - JustNetworking.nl "A group of new media "activists", employees, employers and just plain guys off the street got together InRealLife to discuss the phenomenon of weblogging aka blogging. There were some professionals there and but also complete newbies... Aaah isn't that cute?! BUT IT'S WRONG!
	Wednesday, October 1 Model Hurricanes #Posted by Dreams on 23:30 New Scientist: "Virtual hurricanes have appeared in computer models of the Earth's climate for the first time. The swirling storms are visible in the first results from the Earth Simulator in Yokohama, Japan - the world's fastest supercomputer." They can use world-wide models using boxes of 10km cubed and visualize the effect of global warming, predicting when and where violent storms might strike. They'll plug climate of the last 21000 years into the computer using data from ice cores, tree rings and stalactites and see if something new comes out. :cool: B)
	iRiver America - iHP-100 #Posted by Dreams on 18:30 iRiver America - iHP-100: "The remarkably small and lightweight iHP-100 plays over 300 hours of digital music. Within the sleek magnesium body lies a rechargeable battery that delivers up to 16 hours of life, a built-in FM tuner, an ultra-fast USB 2.0 connection" Woohoo! With Ogg Vorbis support! :respect: Finally!!!
	ANSI character set and equivalent Unicode and HTML characters #Posted by Dreams on 18:22 And here's another good one to print out and memorize! ANSI character set and equivalent Unicode and HTML characters
	Alt Key Codes #Posted by Dreams on 18:20 You will probably never need this, but if you do, you it B A D! Alt Key Codes for things like ß or Ç or é and ë
	Grandma sick #Posted by Dreams on 11:40 Right after my mom, my sister called... My grandmother (oma de Bruijn) is in the hospital. She has had heart problems every so often throughout the last 30 years or so. So that part was not that scary. However, she is 92 or 93 now and getting to an old age and the doctors still don't want to give her a pace maker because "she already so old". But when she was 60-something, she was "too young and we'd better give to an older person". Duuh! They better do something for her or a certain is going to need some pace maker soon! Anyway, she is mobile and just there for observation. She will prolly get medication and be home this weekend. I think I'll go visit her, as she really close to The Hague...
	Mom's birthday #Posted by Dreams on 11:36 Happy Birthday Mom!!! It's my mom's birthday today, so I called her up. They are in France now, near Toulouse, visiting friends and checking out the area to see if there are nice small houses which they could use as summer home. So far, only isolated houses, or atrociously deteriorated houses or expensive or too small, too old, too ugly etc. ;) In other words, no luck yet. but the area is nice, the weather is a comfortable 20 degrees (70 F) and all is well.