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. ;)

	Thursday, April 29 YETI SPORTS and the penguin throwing decathlon #Posted by Dreams on 09:17 YETI SPORTS has a new throw the penguin game! Part 3 is out already and pretty funny too. :D Part 4 is in beta only and will be out in May. Coool and so fun to play.
	Wednesday, April 28 Diana Krall - The Girl In The Other Room - Verve Records #Posted by Dreams on 11:53 Diana Krall, currently my favorite Jazz singer, has her latest CD out now: The Girl In The Other Room from Verve Records. She's great, gorgeous and plays, sings and writes... Some people just really seem to have it all. ;) Highly recommended!
	Tuesday, April 27 Remove the DRMS protection from copy protected audio files #Posted by Dreams on 12:38 Shit... some people are waaaay better than I am! :respect: After having figured out how to remove the protection from Apple's Fairplay audio protection system (the page and code have been removed upon legal threats), this guy now wrote code (230 lines only) to strip the Digital Rights Management (DRMS) from audio files.
	TheTechLounge - Beyond Megapixels - Part I #Posted by Dreams on 12:32 Ready to go digital, finally?! Set to get the latest gadgety digicam with a gazillion megapixels? Sit back, relax, breath deep and think again!!! First read TheTechLounge - Beyond Megapixels' review of why you should not buy solely on max resolution... Go, go, go... and read what I already know! :D
	Airplane wings that change shape like a bird's have scales like a fish #Posted by Dreams on 12:30 This is sooo cool that I won't even describe it... but Penn State University have come up with a way to make airplane wings that change shape like a bird's wings and have scales like a fish. :respect: Sounds so logical and so simple, but I'm dying to find out how they think to do it in mid-flight...
	ZANDhap in de stad! #Posted by Dreams on 12:20 Summer is here...!!! ZANDhap has published the first dates of the recurring zand in stad dinner parties in trendy places in Den Haag (The Hague). Excellent! Can't wait! :9 May 23rd... CHECK! Check out my pictures from last year to see what I mean...
	Monday, April 26 Been a while... #Posted by Dreams on 17:28 Long time no blog! Really busy! Weddings, frisbee, photos, girlfriend and work deadline on Thursday, the 29th. But I am still alive! ;) Beginning on May, I'm a week off to visit my parents in France...
	Friday, April 23 Introduction to spyware #Posted by Dreams on 11:49 Microsoft, in an attempt to be pro-active regarding spyware rules and regulations, has published information and steps to take against spyware. Many users of Internet Explorer and various shareware programs are open to (literally) hundreds of cookies, spyware dlls and other little pieces of code or programs that monitors where you surf, how often, what you do, what you click and so on. None of it is really harmful, but it invades your privacy as you're almost never asked if it's okay nor what is being monitored. New versions of Windows will include pop-up blockers (like the one in the Google toolbar) and tighten the way programs will get installed. Until then, it is a good idea to run a free program like Ad-aware regularly. Especially after you've installed the latest cool shareware program...
	Museum of Time - Aurora Borealis in Terschelling #Posted by Dreams on 09:39 Who said you can't see an aurora here in Holland? Jan Karel Lameer, from Terschelling, proves me wrong with his stunning Museum of Time, showing photos with the aurora in it as recent as May 2003. Duuh! I stand corrected! Thanks to Werner for sending me this link.
	Tuesday, April 20 Woodchurch Village Life Museum #Posted by Dreams on 16:27 Today, I found the museum that is an idea of a good friend of my family for years since 1973: the Boxer Family in Woodchurch, England. After his retirement my "uncle" started the Woodchurch Village Life Museum and tended to a couple of local acres of ancient forest land that was then used as farm land. His intention was returning it to it's original destination and create a local refuge. Cool B)
	Monday, April 19 Reinventing the Yo-Yo #Posted by Dreams on 14:02 Science News Online has a fun article online about Reinventing the Yo-Yo. You probably played with it as a kid, or you were in its revival back in the late 90s. Maybe you have 2 cents yo-yo laying around somewhere in your room or attick. Or perhaps you were serious and spent about $30-40 for a very good yo-yo. Now there is a top-of-the-notch, serious, scientific yo-yo that costs $400 but will out last and out runs absolutely everything! Read the article for a history of the yo-yo (jojo in Dutch), where it came from and other interesting tidbits.
	Friday, April 16 Postnuke community site #Posted by Dreams on 15:58 Working on a test site that will eventually become the community site and forum for Coop IT - Coöperatie voor zelfstandige ITers, dé coop voor IT. It's built out-of-the-box and pretty much unmodified except for configuration. I've added two modules: AT-lite (autothemes) and PNphpBB2 (forums). Everything else is as it came from the ZIP files. Check it out, post msgs here and there, maybe even become a members and see what there is. But be sure not to leave sensitive information there as it is all public and I'll remove the whole thing once I think it's stable and usable enough (sometimes this month).
	Wireless USB (WUSB) Introductory #Posted by Dreams on 15:46 An introduction to Wireless USB (WUSB) is given om DeviceForge.com website. :nerd: It's cool though to get the benefits of simple USB connectivity for novices without the wires. "The WUSB host can logically connect to a maximum of 127 WUSB devices, considered an informal WUSB cluster. WUSB clusters coexist within an overlapping spatial environment with minimum interference, thus allowing a number of other WUSB clusters to be present within the same radio cell."
	Thursday, April 15 The Saga of Seven Suns #Posted by Dreams on 23:46 The Saga of Seven Suns is my favorite new SciFi series for now. And it is not on TV, not a game... it's a book! "OMG, do you still read actual book?!?!", you might say. Yes I do, but rarely. This, however, is too good to miss. So if you're into Dune, StarWars, Foundation and similar series, you'll LOVE The Saga of Seven Suns by Kevin J. Anderson. Trust me!
	The SphereXP - the 3D desktop #Posted by Dreams on 23:39 The SphereXP is a Windows XP implementation of an old idea that Xerox Alto Parc already had back in the late 90s. Why limit yourself to a 2D desktop to keep and organize your icons and windows, when you can 3D and also put windows a bit in the background (literally), when you don't use them for a little while. Or keep all your mail related programs running off to the left and Office windows overhead? :drool: It's totally cool and extremely unnecessary, and yet I would love to have it!!! Of course, Solaris has had its Looking Glass for a while now...
	Peper IT - Internet voor het MKB - Eenvoudige oplossingen voor complexe zaken #Posted by Dreams on 10:22 Finally I got mad at myself and hacked together my company website: Peper IT. Petra photographed some red chilli peppers, based on an idea my roommate Saskia had. We simply added text below it, for now. I may get more creative later. The site also links to my Internet blog for small offices and home offices, because I was unable to set Blogger to ftp the blog to my site. The ftp protocol of Blogger is incompatible with my provider geenpunt.nl... duuh! I thought this was all standard and all, but appearantly not. Must be something to do with the forwarding and such.
	Sophos virus analysis: Troj/Peper-A #Posted by Dreams on 09:32 Cool! They named a virus after me: Troj/Peper-A. LOL "Troj/Peper-A has two copies of itself running at any time, one to download files from the internet and one to monitor the current processes IDs to make sure it is running. Thus, if one copy is terminated using the Task Manager, another copy is immediately started."
	Wednesday, April 14 Forbes.com Reviews GMail's offer #Posted by Dreams on 17:17 Curious about Google Gmail beta offer and hoping you'll get a chance to review it first hand? Well, for now read the Forbes.com GMail review and just dream on a little longer... ;) The search features seem to be really handy for those who save everything but the privacy issues that they stumble over, seem to be a little overreacting... for now...
	Microsoft Discloses Huge Number Of Windows Vulnerabilties #Posted by Dreams on 17:06 Microsoft disclosed Huge Number Of Windows Vulnerabilties, yesterday. WindowsUpdate should have the patches soon if not really. So be sure to update your PCs before virus-makers can create something to hack your system with... Don't say I didn't warn you! "`April's mega collection includes 20 new vulnerabilities, 8 of which are rated as "Critical"... The most serious of the bugs affect Windows NT, 2000, XP, and Server 2003`"
	DJ Woody & DJ GenerationTrance #Posted by Dreams on 17:03 If you like Trance music, you'll love these mp3 downloads of DJ Woody! There nice to chill and get in the mood for the real party! Or just to have on while you're working... Excellent! And if you dig this, be sure to check out DJ GT (GenerationTrance) too. This "Voices of Trance"-series really blow your mind! Woooow! Highy recommended!
	Software Patents #Posted by Dreams on 12:14 It seems all te efforts to block Software Patents in the EU maybe for nothing. FFII writes about the EU Software patents: "The [Presidency] proposed draft text rejects all clarifying amendments made by the European Parliament and instead pushes for direct patentability of computer programs, data structures and process descriptions. A last ditch attempt by the Luxembourg delegation to ensure interoperability with patented standards was rejected." As of today, there are actions and demonstrations starting up all over, including (of course) on the Net.
	Peffisaur - MMS posting to site and blogs #Posted by Dreams on 11:14 My friend Stefan alerted me in his fugly link dump blog about Peffisaur by Hellkvist.org. It is a piece of software that you install on your PHP-enabled webserver and uses mysql, procmail and an MMS camphone to create an MMS PhoneBlog or CamBlog community. Kinda cool! B)
	Small site lay-out change #Posted by Dreams on 01:28 You may not notice... yet... But I changed the lay-out of the site slightly. I've added a section on the right with all the sites I maintain in one form or another. Go check them out! :)
	Tuesday, April 13 Castle "Oud Poelgeest" and the Hortus in Leiden #Posted by Dreams on 19:01 Thankfully, while I didn't have time to fix the pictures of last weekend, Petra did! She has pictures of "Oud Poelgeest" online, an old estate in Oegstgeest, near Leiden. This ancient land and castle (it goes way back about 1000 years!) have been fully restored and is now used as hotel and conference center or for weddings. It's really nice and beautifully done, as are the grounds and moat around the estate. On Monday, we went to the Hortus in Leiden again. It was a gorgeous day and we were curious how much had changed since our visit in March this year.
	tBLOG! #Posted by Dreams on 16:50 I have so many things to blog about... but I also have to work for my new company... :) Had a great Easter weekend and loads of fun but simply not enough time to tell y'all about it, let alone copy, edit and upload the pictures... But I do want to tell you about tBLOG!, a bloggin tool that was new to me and wanted to tell you about. Looks cute and it's free. But that's about all I know about it.
	Monday, April 12 Syndic8.com #Posted by Dreams on 22:01 "Oh, come on! How many site feeds could there be?! I mean, who syndicates their news...?!" Check Syndic8.com... :shock:
	Digital Photography: Nikon D70 Review #Posted by Dreams on 21:15 Much awaited and highly anticipated! DPReview finally published their in-depth Nikon D70 Review. Bottomline: it is very similair to the Canon 10D and 300D. Pros and cons are off in the margin and mainly noticable only to profressionals or with professional tools. Two most regarded features by me: almost instant power-on and blistering read/writes from/to CF cards. Which is something I find irritatingly slow on my Canon 10D. :(
	ViralMeister - Your Guide to Funny Ads and Clips #Posted by Dreams on 18:52 ViralMeister is a site where they show you or link you to funny or sexy or otherwise interesting advertising videos and clips on the Net. Daily, weekly or monthly... doesn't matter. It's garuanteed to brighten up your day and waste a bit of your time (mileage may vary here ;)
	Peper IT #Posted by Dreams on 16:58 Petra did me a favor and made me my first company logo, based on a suggestion from Saskia: a red, hot, chilli pepper (pun intended!). I have two versions for now: one 68 px high and one 125 px wide. Why? Because these are commonly used ad sizes. It'll do for now. We just made the logo the way we wanted without taking into account certain (in)conveniences for web banners and buttons and the like...
	Sunday, April 11 Juli and Harald #Posted by Dreams on 20:18 After being absent from our lives, I finally managed to catch up with Juli and Harald again after I don't know how many months... They are just back from a Nicaragua vacation, where they want to open a diving center. So they stopped by to visit Saskia and me, and we all had dinner together, watched 300+ pictures, talked software, hardware, websites and more... Great fun! Much too long! :hug:
	Easter on the Net - Easter Bunny #Posted by Dreams on 12:03 Happy Easter!!!
	Thursday, April 8 Lamp Post Broadband #Posted by Dreams on 17:19 If you were on the road and wanted to check Email of some website, you can use GPRS or UMTS (real-soon-now). But what if some gasstation with a phone connection would simply get ADSL and put up a WiFi hotspot? Most new PDA, SmartPhones and laptops have WiFi built-in and older models can frequently be upgraded to use it. So you'd be set too, really quickly and very easily... That's exactly what a UK company 'Last Mile Communications' must have thought. Lamppost Broadband will install 150,000 wireless transceivers in lamp posts and signs, offering 40Mbps data connections to customers.
	Soul Calimeter #Posted by Dreams on 16:07 When using a computer game to play any kind of match with/against other people, you always run into the problem of deciding who's the best. Keeping scores on paper is prone to cheating and you won't trust your worst "enemy" of counting your wins properly, now do you? So, someone create the Soul Calimeter for the GameCube to exactly that. By analysing the video stream for certain events, the computer keeps score of who fights whom, who wins, which character they play(ed), and so on... REALLY cool! Now if I only had a GameCube... ;)
	FAA License Awarded to Private Spaceship to Expand Flight Testing #Posted by Dreams on 15:37 The X Prize is a race for space... Anyone can try to build a spaceship that holds a person, flies to 100km in space, return and do the same thing again within 2 weeks. It's a race to prove to NASA that it doesn't take $1 billion to go to space. Well, recently Scaled Composites has been granted a launch licence for a series of sub-orbital flights over a one-year period for Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne.
	SourceForge.net: ClamAV and ClamWin Antivirus #Posted by Dreams on 15:17 Virusses are terrible and they cause much wasted time besides doing major damage on occasion. But McAfee and Norton/Symantec are troublesome, relatively expensive and sometimes doo more damage to your systems than the virusses would. I prefer the old vesion 4.5 from McAfee, because it only checks virusses and nothing else and it nice, small in size and comes with my DSL subscription. But what about Outlook protection? Are there alternatives? Well, Martin recently installed ClamAV on his server, so I went and checked it out: there is also a beta version of a Windows front-end: ClamWin "Front-end to Clam Antivirus. Includes scheduler, virus database updates, standalone scanner, context menu integration to MS Windows Explorer and Add-in to MS Outlook. Also features All-In-One MS Windows Setup." Highly recommended if you don't have any other virus protection!!!
	MrVanes.com #Posted by Dreams on 14:58 "Houston! We have a problem!": MrVanes.com is down. insert sound: It's Not A Problem That I Can't Fix, 'coz I Can Do It In The Mix!
	Tuesday, April 6 Chernobyl - 20 years after on ground zero #Posted by Dreams on 17:49 Do you ever wonder what Chernobyl would look like, almost 20 years after the accident? Ever wonder what the houses would look like? Are there any plants left? Animals maybe? Well I read or heard somewhere that wolves actually rule town now and wild life is booming. Rare plants and animals are returning to what once was their turf anyway. And I'm not talking the mutated kind. Well, turns out, Elena thought someone might be curious too. Elena is the daughter of a Nuclear Physisist. Her dad works in the area and has taught his daughter what to be careful with and what not. He gave her a radiation meter to guard herself so she knows what goes on. And Elena? She drives her 1100cc Kawasaki through the deserted town and took pictures of the whole thing. Cooool, very sad too, though.
	Anniversary #Posted by Dreams on 13:35 Today is the day, exactly one year ago, when I kissed my girlfriend Petra for the first time... (K) Happy anniversary sweetie!
	Monday, April 5 MyTripJournal.com - Your Personal Travel Website #Posted by Dreams on 20:33 MyTripJournal.com - Your Personal Travel Website is a site that lets you create a log/blog of your trip in minutes and all you have to do when you're out and about is check into an Internet cafe and upload photos and some text. Cool! :) Great idea! (Thanks to Petra for finding the site)
	Nokia 6230 #Posted by Dreams on 17:26 I think I want a Nokia 6230 real bad! Or is it the 9500? Or perhaps the 7250i? Doh! I dunno anymore! ;) :drool: Why doesn't someone make a comparison chart... Nokia changes too quickly... grrrr :frusty:
	Why Microsoft wins no matter how big the fines are #Posted by Dreams on 13:35 Bob Cringley, a PBS host and writer, has an interesting blog about Microsoft's legal fines and fees: "Paying a $3 billion fine to keep moving a $10 billion annual European cash machine that yields $7 billion in annual profits is a no-brainer. Would you pay $3 billion knowing that doing so would bring in a net profit of $4 billion PER YEAR, especially given the likelihood that the final judgement would be reduced or eliminated entirely? OF COURSE you'd pay the $3 billion"
	Time to sanction or boycott the US...? #Posted by Dreams on 13:26 The BBC reports that the US are now taking digital mugshots and fingerprints from all tourists, even 'allied' visitors. Everytime a visitor enters or leaves the US, they will have to get their mugshot and fingerprints taken! Take the huge database of digital mugshots and digital fingerprints and add to that the fact that they will be kept forever and I think you've got something that affects human rights or so. I think it's time the rest of the world starts to do something against this. I mean, Hitler required all Jews to visibly carry large yellow David stars. That's only a small step from what the US are doing... :puke:
	Feed me, Seamour! #Posted by Dreams on 13:16 Toby, from Force Elektro (my frisbee club), also took some pictures at the NBK Indoor Frisbee Tournament 2 weeks ago. Of course, the pictures are from when I'm eating as this happens quite a lot, accrding to people who don't know me very well yet...! LOL
	HP Labs - Photographic memories: Always-on camera captures life's fleeting moments #Posted by Dreams on 10:47 HP Labs is working on a way to create an always-on digicam so that you'll never loose a precious moment anymore... The biggest problem they have, the cam already exists, "is, can we develop algorithms that will automatically pick out the interesting bits?" Pattern-matching, filtering, motion detection, head tracking, image recognition... this is where it all come together B) Cooool!
	Free Tutorials about HTML, Flash, PHP, Photoshop, Blogs etc. #Posted by Dreams on 10:38 Found a great program or tool or programming lanuague but you have a question that you simply can't solve? Chances are someone out there is an expert at it! Go and check out Tutorialized!!! Highly recommended!!!
	Friday, April 2 Gmail: Frequently asked questions #Posted by Dreams on 22:03 About Gmail: "Frequently asked questions" Hope this answers most of your questions... ;) It did for me.
	The Register: Sun settles with MS for $2 billion #Posted by Dreams on 21:58 The Register: "Sun Microsystems and Microsoft are to stop sueing each other for ten years, in a settlement which will see Sun trouser almost $2bn." There is also an interesting thread about this on Slashdot.
	Google Gets the Message, Launches Gmail #Posted by Dreams on 16:34 Google is creating an Email service, Gmail with inboxes that are 1GB big!!! Compared to 2 MB on Hotmail, 4-6 MB on Yahoo and most others, that is e n o r m o u s!!! Those interested in learning more about Gmail can visit http://gmail.google.com.
	Thursday, April 1 April Fools Day #Posted by Dreams on 09:24 I just woke up and I have a funny feeling... My water company sent me a letter that today, from 930am til 3pm or so, the water will we shut down due to maintenance work. And while it's true, they have been messing with sidewalks, tearing it up, closing it again, doing something indiscribable... this morning, when I hastily stepped in the shower at 9am, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was being screwed. I mean, if I worked at the company and had to do the maintenance work, I would have announced there would have been no water at all, all day! When in fact it would only need to be cut off for an hour or so... :)