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. ;)

	Tuesday, May 31 Safety Humour From Down Under #Posted by Dreams on 13:34 Found this page with funny pictures while looking for some images I could use on a website... If you have a couple of minutes to kill, you'll enjoy it! Promise!
	Cheating wife? Try GPS panties #Posted by Dreams on 13:05 Reading is believing: GPS panties. It allows you to 24/7 track the wearer of the undergarments... ROFL But wait, there's more! It also allows you to monitor the temperature and heartrate of the wearer. So this one sick guy bought some for his daughter when she entered puberty and would call her mobile phone whenever he thought she was getting too excited! OMG!
	Sony details PlayStation 3 #Posted by Dreams on 12:20 On the Register, there is a post that reveals the Sony PlayStation 3. :drool: So cool! B)
	New release of FreePOPs #Posted by Dreams on 09:09 FreePOPs has just released a new version. This open source, cross-platform webmail reader allows you to POP your Hotmail, Yahoo!Mail, Lycos and many more free webmail services. Even when the mail service does not allow you to POP your account, FreePOPs will let you do it (without paying for it too!). You install FreePOPs as a local POP server on your PC and configure it to fetch your webmail for you. In Thunderbird or Evolution or whatever mail client you use, you create an account and point it to the local FreePOPs server. Voila!
	Monday, May 30 Ducati Club Races in Assen #Posted by Dreams on 15:26 On Sunday, my boss invited me, my colleagues and some partners for the Ducati Club Races in Assen. It's not really like the TT in Assen, but on the same circuit anyway. So it was like an appetizer for the real thing in July. ;) Anyway, Paul Haullussy is a private racer and he competed with his Aprilia RSV Mille in the SAM 700 division. I put the pictures I took online. Enjoy!
	Saturday, May 28 Sweden moves to curb piracy #Posted by Dreams on 20:57 Sweden also moves to curb piracy. Downloading of music, movies and software will be illegal effective July 1st. Before, only uploading was illegal. For now, downloading of music and software is still legal... :rip:
	Friday, May 27 Nanotubes help neurons get chatty #Posted by Dreams on 16:27 Well, if too much alcohol or XTC kills too much of your brain neurons, rest assured: Nanotubes help neurons get chatty again! "Italian researchers have managed to persuade brain cells to grow on a nanotube-coated surface - a breakthrough that could provide immediate help to good, old humans. The team found that the nanotubes actually boosted communication, or neural signal transfer, between the cells, which were taken from the hippocampus." And they said in school that science was for nerds... Ha! One day those people will come crawling to you to please, please pterry please give some new neurons because they can't stop peeing all over themselves! ;)
	Angulo Beach in Scheveningen #Posted by Dreams on 14:53 The beachclub formerly known as "Oscar's on the Beach", is know known as Angulo Beach. It is still located in the same spot though, below the Carlton Beach Hotel in Scheveningen, at the end of the boulevard. It is at the beginning of the "Zwarte pad" beach area... just so you know. :) They still have the great beach volleyball field too. See you there this summer! (y)
	Outlook vs Evolution vs Kontact #Posted by Dreams on 13:11 OpenSourceVersus has posted a side-by-side screenshot comparison of outlook, Evolution and Kontact. For those of you who're still on Windows and find Linux software still for nerds only, take a look! You'll be surprised how good it looks and how well you can be off in Linux. No need to go without your favorite tools...
	Netcraft: Anti-phising toolbat for Firefox #Posted by Dreams on 10:29 Netcraft created a browser toolbar to help in fighting phishing of websites and Emails (that contain URLs to sites). Now they also have a Firefox version of the toolbar. B) Cool!
	How to Defeat Laptop Locks #Posted by Dreams on 10:24 Martin pointed me to a blog about picking locks of laptops. There is a video that shows how simple it is, even when picking kensington locks. Scary... Better take them with me, I guess.
	Tuesday, May 24 this is sooo weird #Posted by Dreams on 09:57 This so weird... In Firefox (I used 1.0.4), type m3pio in the URL line and hit enter. You should be redirected to a secret, hidden ftp server in Finland and you'll start to download the activation codes for the old CCCP nuclear arsenal. When you combine the digits at the Fibonacci position inside the digitally encrypted quantum stream and concatenate them, then seperate them into strings 16 characters long, you should be able to activate the Polar Defense circle... bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Oh shit... it was just a dream. I thought I was in a Bond movie for a second. The part of the ftp server is true though. ;)
	Hifidelio Music Server #Posted by Dreams on 09:46 Hmmm, must get me one of these: Hifidelio Music Server. 80 GB hard disk, CD-R/W built-in, WiFi, Ethernet and USB connector, encode to mp3 VBR, RAW (AIFF, PCM of WAV) or FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec). Playback Ogg/Vorbis, AAC (MPEG4) or WMA in addition to the formats mentioned before. Even multi-room streaming (through satellite stations coming real soon now). The specs are impressive, but unfortunately, so it the price tag. :( €699.-
	Making sense of CPUs #Posted by Dreams on 09:26 :nerd: AMD has created a Desktop Processor Quick Reference Guide, well 'quick' is a big word... It lets you compare the different CPUs out there and clearly see what their differences are.
	Systm #Posted by Dreams on 09:07 A new hype... you read it here first! Systm
	Tuscany #Posted by Dreams on 09:03 In a last attempt to get something useful out of my laptop (I've messed up when I partioned the 40 GB drive, now I have to redo it), I've hooked my card reader to SuSE 9.3, copied the pictures to the laptop, used Gwenview to filter them, rename and resize them in a batch (just like irfanview) and uploaded 50-some to a Tuscany gallery. It's not what I expected. Tuscany is about as green as can be in early May. Sure their are hills, but late summer and early Fall are probably more photogenic. Still, it's very pretty, cute, quiet, clean and... green! All shades of green dotted with the occasional blossom bush or tree.
	Monday, May 23 Compact Flash 4GB (SanDisk, Extreme III) #Posted by Dreams on 16:04 Are you a serieus photographer? You use a digital camera? Can your digicam use Compact Flash cards? Ever heard of the lightning fast (20 MB/sec!) ExtremeIII serie from SanDisk? Well, you should! Tweakers PriceWatch tells me a SanDisk 4 GB Compact Flash 4GB Extreme III is now only €399. Why it's a steal so cheap! ;)
	George Dantzig, 1914-2005 #Posted by Dreams on 11:32 George Dantzig, inventor of Linear Programming, died on May 13th. Quote from Slashdot: "He was also the now-legendary student who turned in solutions for what he had taken to be a homework assignment, only to find out they had been posted as examples of what were suspected to be unsolvable problems."
	BrowserCam #Posted by Dreams on 11:31 This is a great service! When you're desiging websites, you always have the problem that you're wondering what your great site will look like in the obscure browser that the one important client will use because he can't upgrade the company's browser. IE 4.0 or Netscape 4.7x or worse... But now you can! BrowserCam hosts a farm of Mac, Linux and Windows servers and lets you enter an URL for them to (automatically) check in an array of different browsers on different platforms. This way you don't have worry about maintaining the setups and can check whenever you want, whatever you want. Sadly, this great service comes at a price. You can choose one-day unlimited access for last-minute CSS checking/hacking. Or a one month, one user account for cross-platform web development right from the start. You choose. But choose wisely. ;)
	Saturday, May 21 Euro Song Festival #Posted by Dreams on 23:48 Tonight is the Euro Song Festival, a gathering of wanabee artists who all hope to win and make it like ABBA did back in the 70s. Well, the Netherlands are out in either case, but it's always fun to watch the battle over the points. Especially among neighboring countries. LOL :devil: I often wonder if, when the going gets tough, the votes get changed in the last minute to favor the one or the other... I guess we'll never know.
	100,000 open source software projects #Posted by Dreams on 16:05 Shit I missed it... SourceForge.net is now hosting 100,319 open source software projects on its development platform. That's huuuge! :respect: Please donate using PayPal or other means, if you can and want to. (y)
	Friday, May 20 Happy Birthday Sjoerdski! #Posted by Dreams on 09:01 Today, my good friend Sjoerdski turned 35! Woohoo! He's now a respectable man as well. ;) Feels good not be so alone amongst children anymore! LOL
	Thursday, May 19 Masturbating Can Kill You #Posted by Dreams on 14:22 In the UK, a housewife - who remains anonymous ;) - has been hospitalized after wearing panties with built-in vibrator. While shopping in her local supermarket, she became so aroused by the gadget that she fainted, fell and hit her head against the shelves. When paramedics, alerted by the employees, came to the rescue, they "found the black leatherette panties still buzzing". After being rushed to the hospital, she fully recovered and was given her panties back... in a discreet plastic bag. :ROFL:
	WebDesign with CSS #Posted by Dreams on 13:32 Want to (re)design a websiteand use only CSS this time? But you're unsure if you can do what you want and if CSS can hack it? Check out this CSS Reboot Gallery, where pros show you what's possible and how it's done. Very cool! :respect:
	Wednesday, May 18 Netcraft anti-phishing Toolbar #Posted by Dreams on 15:16 The Netcraft Toolbar has been created to monitor the hard-to-spot and potentially dangerous form of phishing in browsers. Phishing is where hackers present you with websites of HTML Emails that appear to be coming from legitimate servers, but through redirects or temporary DNS servers actually go to the hackers' webservers. There they insert code into your browser, download trojans or abuse some JPG images to corrupt your browser to start to take over your PC. What the Netcraft toolbar does is help you in spotting phishing before it's too late but also blacklist any found phishing attempts with Netcraft so the next person won't be affected as the attempt is already recognized in his browser as such. :) So if you're still using Internet Explorer and can't or won't switch to Firefox or Mozilla, do yourself a favor and install this simple (spyware-free) toolbar to protect yourself at least somewhat more...
	Tuesday, May 17 Creating a favicon #Posted by Dreams on 14:35 Want to have your own favicon logo for your website? Don't have any graphics skills or just lazy? Try the Online Tools and Services from Chami.com. Get your normal logo, iether GIF, JPG or PNG. Upload it and they'll convert it for you into a 16x16 and 32x32 logo as well as a transparent version. B) Cool! Then all you gotta do it unzip the ZIP file you downloaded, upload the favicon.ico file to your website's root directory et voila! Excellent! (y)
	Happy Birthday Princes Máxima #Posted by Dreams on 07:52 Happy Birthday Princess Máxima! Today is the 34th birthday of H.K.H. prinses M?xima, prinses der Nederlanden, prinses van Oranje-Nassau. View the link to see her (Dutch) resumé.
	Monday, May 16 Desktop Searches Compared #Posted by Dreams on 12:29 Thinking about installing Google Desktop search? Searching for alternatives? No clue about the differences? Check out the Design Group Wiki. They list a bunch of other desktop search tools, among others Beagle (for Linux). It's a really a nicely formatted comprehensive matrix of features and pros and cons, but it's great to get you started.
	E3 Chronicles: The First 10 Years: Feature #Posted by Dreams on 12:15 E3 Chronicles: The First 10 Years "With yet another E3 just around the corner, there's plenty of excitement in the air as everyone waits to see what the console manufacturers have in store for us next generation. On top of that, there are still plenty of games for current game systems, and the PC that people will want to look at. However, today we're going to take a look back in time at the first 10 E3s."
	Thursday, May 12 Mysteryland - The Line-up #Posted by Dreams on 19:19 Partyflock posted the Mysteryland line-up... :drool: :bounce: (y) yeah! :D
	Mozilla Firefox 1.0.4 released to fix new security bugs #Posted by Dreams on 19:02 Mozilla has released a new version of Firefox in order to counter three security bugs that were recently discovered.
	Wednesday, May 11 Smartphones, KillerPDAs (KPDA) and more #Posted by Dreams on 22:17 Recently, I have been on a training for my job. I was tought about the world of mobile client syncing. I.e. reading your email on your phone and having sent emails go through your own email server (so they appear in your sent box at work!), syncing your calendar while on the move so when making that important follow-up meeting with the big client, you know you'll be available. Like getting all your company contacts on your phone, in case you need them. Or just a selection of this all, a selection that you set (with a little help from inbox rules). I must stay, it appeals to me. I have 5-7 mail boxes and everytime I reinstall my PC I have trouble restoring my old folders. So having one place online where I can collect, sort and group incoing emails is starting to become more and more interesting. Having an IMAP server on the internet somewhere and using SSL access to it (port 465) seems like a great idea! That's exactly what Teamware Mobile does. It sits between your (corporate) groupware server (ie. Exchange, Groupwise or Notes) and let's you mobile client talk to these servers. Sync all or only sync the "mobile" folder that you've put together. Great stuff! Best thing is, it only needs a GPRS connection with true internet access (not some proxy guarded shit) and a few small add-ons for your Series 60 or 80 or UIQ phone. And it installs along-side the built-in phone app. So you won't have two Email or calendar applications, like some do. Now if only I can pursuade my bosses that in order to support the server I most surely would need to have a KillerPDA (KPDA) myself. Perhaps a N91. Or a Treo650. Or maybe, worst case a P910. Because I prefer PDAs with a phone over phones-that-cram-in-too-much-PDA-shit-and-become-useless.
	iTunes Music Store Selling Videos Now #Posted by Dreams on 13:19 And more Apple news: iTunes Music Store Selling Videos Now. If you buy an album, you can select some videos as well. However, videos are not sold seperately (yet). I guess they want to check and see how it's going and figure out the best way to protect, encrypt and package it. "The videos for this particular artist are provided with the album purchase only and are not available for individual purchase. Purchasing the album provides you with 4 short .mp4 videos. These particular videos are 480x272 pixels, 30FPS with 44kHz audio." If this keeps up, Apple may single handedly, change the entire music and video business. :respect:
	Quantum cryptography tackles video #Posted by Dreams on 13:14 Toshiba researchers from Toshiba Research Europe in Cambridge have been succesful at encrypting an audio and video stream over an optical fiber link using quantum cryptography. They have also demonstrated that changing the encryption key at regular intervals was possible and the encryption was applied to a regular IP data stream. Their test system has been operating on MCI's network for the last month without any problems. This means that broadcast companies can now use secure fiber optical links between source and destination. Movie theatres can receive the lastest blockbuster direct from H(B)ollywood with high quality DTS without the need for expensive and vulnerable 70mm tapes. Securitycams can be fitted with secure transmission lines. And so on. "Communication with quantum cryptography is inherently secure because each bit in a cryptographic key -- basically a large number that should only be known to the sender and receiver -- is encoded upon a single photon. Any attempts by a third party to 'hack' or copy this key will quickly become obvious to the sender and receiver."
	500 million songs per year #Posted by Dreams on 13:03 TheRegister informs me that Apple iTunes sales sail past 400 million. That means, that the website sells more than 500 million songs per year!!! Ka-tsching! That's a lot of tunes. Hope they're all using PyMusique or SharpMusique! ;) Apple recently also opened new stores in Scandinavia and Switserland. Users in Europe can choose from 1,000,000 songs. US users have 1,500,000 songs at their disposal. I myself have approx. 500x13=6500 songs in my collection. Hmm, guess it's time to accept defeat. ;)
	Tuesday, May 10 PyMusique & SharpMusique #Posted by Dreams on 19:44 There has been an update to PyMusique, the Linux front-end to iTunes. And, better for most people, there is a Windows front-end based on PyMusique: SharpMusique! It lets you use iTunes just as usual. You can sign in to your account and search for and download music. But there is an added benefit to using this open source iTunes interface... ;) 'nuf said!
	Sunday, May 8 Posts lost... #Posted by Dreams on 20:04 Blogger lost my posts... again. :( Of all the posts I made from Italy, only two got saved. The rest disappeared, just like last time. I mailed them detailed error reports, as I was prepared for this to happen this time... hope they can track it down now. Worst case, I have to retyp all the posts from the buffer on my phone (I blogged using SMS messages). Oh well... I just hate indeterminate errors though.
	Back home #Posted by Dreams on 19:55 Took a bit longer than expected, but we went from the airport straight to my parents' house in Bussum. Isabelle had a baby boy on Saturday, so we visited her in the hospital right away. Vincent is a cute, black haired baby boy! All is well, both the mother, the father and the kids are doing fine. :) On Sunday, we went to the hospital again. Isa was already released from the hospital! So we went ahead to their house, got some food and uploaded their pictures of the baby and the birth to their smug. ;) Our stuff was still at my parents' so we went back there around 2pm, had lunch all together and my dad dropped us off at the train station... It was a great week and a good weekend to round it off. /me happy
	Saturday, May 7 Driving in Italy #Posted by Dreams on 22:33 Dutch drivers are pretty bad. Belgian drivers are crazy drivers. Italians are crazy fucking lunatics! LOL My god!!! There should be laws... oh wait, there are, never mind... There should be police!
	Ready 4 Take-Off #Posted by Dreams on 12:34 We're about to take off... Ready, set, go! See you!
	Coming to an end #Posted by Dreams on 09:25 All good things come to an end. Have been on the road since 630am, driving back to Milan. Drop off car, fly at 1330pm. :( Boohoo
	Friday, May 6 Uncle Chris #Posted by Dreams on 14:02 Today at 11am sharp, I became uncle Chris for the second time! My sister Isa gave birth to Vincent Daniel, a baby boy!
	Thursday, May 5 Sun, Rain and Dirt #Posted by Dreams on 19:17 Cloudy as it was, we went early to Pienza. "Coulds rolled in from the North and it start' to rain." So we snuck back through the country-side and back into the sun. Rain missed us completely! Woohoo. Rain:0 Us:1
	Wednesday, May 4 Siena #Posted by Dreams on 22:34 Today we slept in; had a quiet morning at the pool; drove to Siena at 2pm and walked through town. We mainly sat in the big square in town, read our books, had ice cream and at 7pm we strolled off, wondering around looking for a nice place to have dinner. Very nice, peaceful day.
	Tuesday, May 3 Resist #Posted by Dreams on 21:39 Tonight we're seeing a movie about the Living Theatre with our newly met friends Valerie and Ruth Oisteanu from NYC. Resist to be with the living! Protest, revolt and so on... We'll see, for now I'm on vacation! :D
	Cecina beach #Posted by Dreams on 13:32 A day near the beach. We were at Volterra but didn't enjoy it. So we drove another 20 minutes et voila! Sea! Partly cloudy but still nice. Windy though. Next stop: off for a picnic in the hills... [update: make that beach!]
	Monday, May 2 Lunch in the sun #Posted by Dreams on 13:24 Still blue skies, we're enjoying a day at home. Fresh food for lunch, music, books. Nice and quiet! Ahhh insert birds chirping here
	Sunday, May 1 Greve #Posted by Dreams on 13:15 Beautiful day in the country! Stopping for lunch in Greve. Ancient town, castle, square, pubs, cozy, sun, wine, Petra... Hmmm :)
	Chianti region #Posted by Dreams on 09:55 Blue skies, 25 celius at least and we're going to tour the Chianti region. Tomorrow, off to see San Gimigniano.
	Bella Italia! #Posted by Dreams on 09:39 Got here at 930pm last night and discovered all restaurants closed. Guess French dinner times are really just that: French. Oh well, went to bed early and awoke to a gorgeous day!