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, February 28 bash.org: the only thing missing is U #Posted by Dreams on 13:36 On bash.org is another brilliant guy. Read what he has to stay about Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) next marketing slogan... ROFLMAO
	New photos online #Posted by Dreams on 13:06 I've uploaded some photos I had gathering silicon dust on my hard disk: - Trance Energy 2006 photos from mid Febuary - Barcelona power trip photos of almost everything Gaudi had done there
	Cracking Enigma code #Posted by Dreams on 10:25 With the idea "Better late than never", a group of code hackers have taken it upon themselves to crack 64 year old messages from the Germans during WWII in a distributed fashion. The first message is already craked. The messages are encoded using the Enigma machine and no one has been able to decode them... upto now. You can download a client yourself and participate, much like the SETI experiment a while ago. Messages used to be cracked with this huge machine. Today, even your mobile smartphone could help, given the right client.
	Monday, February 27 Orange, the Blender Project #Posted by Dreams on 10:18 Orange Go check it out, more blogging later!
	Friday, February 24 Apple Hits 1 Billion iTunes Song Downloads #Posted by Dreams on 13:11 And they said no one would ever pay for audio on the Internet: Apple Hits 1 Billion iTunes Song Downloads, yesterday!
	The Love is Back #Posted by Dreams on 11:10 The Love is Back!!! So cool! July 15th, Berlin, write it down, start booking!
	Thursday, February 23 Web Hosting Wars Heat Up #Posted by Dreams on 18:00 Now that both Microsoft and Google are ready to offer free web hosting services, ISP are beefing up their packages to make sure they still can compete... somewhat. Remember Lycos and Geocities in the mid 90's? Interesting to see where this leads.
	Powertrip: Barcelona #Posted by Dreams on 17:37 Just got back last night from a short trip to Barcelona. Petra and I were going to go skiing with her family, but the trip was cancelled due to health problems of her mom. Since we'd already reserved the week, Petra, her sister Marleen and I took a trip to Barcelona instead. Skiing was just impossible, with the vacation rush for that week. Barcelona was great. Already Spring-time there! :) Lots of sunshine, blue skies and easy temps. I only took my hooded Blogger sweatshirt, more than enough. We saw all the Gaudi things: La Pedrera, Casa Milà, Park Guëll, Segrada Familia and more. Mleen had serious ankle problems from all the walking. All of our legs, thighs and calves were sore. Walking stairs is a punishment. :) Photos are online.
	Friday, February 17 When muslims burn the wrong flag... #Posted by Dreams on 12:25 This was on bash.org: when muslims burn the wrong flag... LOL
	Tuesday, February 14 Happy Valentine's Day #Posted by Dreams on 14:37 Happy Valentine's Day!!!
	Friday, February 10 Samsung P300: small, pretty, quiet beamer #Posted by Dreams on 16:04 Samsung has created killer beamer: the Samsung P300. Small, pretty, silent, energy efficient and very portable! Just what my girlfriend ordered! ;)
	CSS Generator Form #Posted by Dreams on 13:52 The gods from PositionIsEverything (PIE) have done what no one thought possible! They've created a CSS generator for 1, 2 or 3 column CSS designs for websites. :) The Page Maker, by ClevaTreva Designs, is a great piece of programming and gives you working, cross-browser CSS designs that you tweak to your needs. It also works as a great teaching utility because you can play with it and the code it generates and teach yourself how CSS works. And coming from the PIE gods it means you learn it the right way! :respect: Highly recommended!
	Wednesday, February 8 iTunes - Billion Songs Countdown #Posted by Dreams on 10:02 Apple is waiting for the iTunes Billion-th Song to be downloaded... OMG!
	Foxit: Small, Fast, Clean, and FREE PDF Reader #Posted by Dreams on 09:22 Adobe Acrobat Reader is a must have program under Windows or Linux for that matter. You simply need it to read all the PDFs out there. Right? Wrong! Linux has tons of alternate free PDF readers such as GhostScript, X PDF, KPDF and GNOME's Document Viewer. So it's not really a problem that Adobe finally wrote an Acrobar Reader v7 for Linux. However, Windows users will love the free Foxit PDF reader. It's lightning fast, only 1 MB to download (compared to 20+ MB for Adobe!) and it does what 98% of the population needs: open a PDF file and print it occasionally. Recommended!
	Tuesday, February 7 VMware Introduces Free GSX Server #Posted by Dreams on 10:07 It's true: VMware Introduces Free GSX Server. Cool! The virtualization battle is heating up... "In the left corner: MS Virtual Server, the proprietary giant. In the right corner: the reigning champion VMware... In the other left corner: XEN, the open source boy-wonder!" LOL :D
	Adn they say mobile radiation can do no harm #Posted by Dreams on 09:48 Some people in the UK have come up with a great way to make breakfast: they boil an egg using their mobile phone! Serious! No kidding! At least, the site offers no proof but it seems plausible. Following the instructions on their site, they were abel to cook an average egg in 3 minutes of free local calls... /me is stunned
	Monday, February 6 OpenRAW - Digital Image Preservation Through Open Documentation #Posted by Dreams on 16:09 In an attempt to break open the world of proprietary RAW formats, an initiative has launched to create an OpenRAW format for all cameras. They have just started and are inquiring about people's wants and needs. If you are a photographer and regularly use RAW technology, please take a moment to fill out their survey.
	Pittsburgh Steelers win SuperBowl #Posted by Dreams on 15:19 Wow, I can't believen it! After like 30 years or so, Pittsburgh finally wins another Superbowl! Amazing. I believe last year they lost in the finals or so... Too bad I no longer live in Pittsburgh, because while I lived there (1986-1990), the Steelers weren't much at all. I went to a few games in Three Rivers Stadium and decided College games were much more fun. The damn commerical breaks in NFL annoyed the hell out of me. :D But today I am kinda proud that I have lived there and carry at least the knowledge of the Pittsburgh Steelers. So I'll say: congrats to the team and all of its fans in the Burgh!
	Sunday, February 5 LinkedIn: Christian Peper #Posted by Dreams on 17:21 I had a few quiet moments today and I browsed salary.com to check which job titles are applicable to me, in the various positions I have worked in over the years. It's amazing what a few edits can do to a resumé! Check out my update LinkedIn profile! LOL You have to take things with a bit of irony of course, but to the untrained eye, my resume is very impressive all of a sudden! If you have a profile on LinkedIn or elsewhere and are serious about job searches, check out the job titles in various industries on salary.com and cut&paste them into your resumé!
	Epson Scanners #Posted by Dreams on 14:54 Well I'm glad that's cleared up. We got the driver alright; installed fine; now it seems I did buy a great little scanner, however, I was not prepared to have to scan medium format negatives. The scanner won't do transparent objects, only reflective. So make mental note of that in case you go out and buy a scanner one of these days. ;) Petra is now looking at different Epson Scanners. Luckily I caught her just before she had made up her mind to go out and buy a €500 thingy... pfffew. All she seems to need is the Perfection 3490. The 3590 just adds a 35mm negative feeder for €60! Ka-tching! And the high-end scanners (4490/4990) add a bit more dpi/ppi, scanning speed and Epson's (albeit outstanding!) post-processing software DIGITAL ICE. The expensive scanners also have a higher D_max value, giving you a better resolving power in the dark areas. However, it seems to me you'll only get the max out of the 100% price difference when you scan old and/or dirty or scratched objects frequently and routinely.
	BenQ Drivers Mirascan 620U #Posted by Dreams on 13:32 Petra decided recently she wants to scan her own negatives. She bought her own Mamiya 645 and has to make frequent trips to Amsterdam, to the Foto Academie, to scan the huge negatives in as TIFF, put them on a USB stick and process them at home. So I told her she may be able to use my old 600dpi flatbed scanner... Naturally, finding a new driver for WinXP proved a bit harder than I thought. But when I found out BenQ is now what Acer was, it was very easy to get a WinXP drivers for the Mirascan 620U. Pffew. In 5 years time, the driver for a 5 year old scanner has doubled in size. I'm curious for what! ;)
	The future of Digital Cameras #Posted by Dreams on 10:14 C\|Net has an interesting article on the future of digital cameras, now that everyone's got enough megapixels and we can stop comparing cameras based on that. pfffew, finally. What's up next? Well, they say that they can now innovate the camera's design instead of resemblingthe good ol' photocamera. Or that they'll add image stabilizers. And get better in taking video footage (like Canon's Powershot S80 which can record at 1024x768px!). WiFi digicams are around the corner, making that 4GB CF card kinda obsolete! :) And more...
	Simple software to help you get organized: 37signals #Posted by Dreams on 10:03 Check out 37signals. You must! They write simple software to get to going and it's all free! The basic versions, that is. For some of the more advanced products you can buy access to more functions/room/features. But you'll only need to when you really love the tool because then you simply want to use it for everything. :) And that's when you need more room to put it in! ;) They have Basecamp, a web-based project management tool focusing onh communication between project members to ensure to get work done, instead of Gantt charts and deadlines and meetings. There is Backpack, a collecting tool to gather ideas, lists, notes, images and more. Kinda like a plastic folder to hold all the snippets of some idea you have together and organized. Writeboard is like a sharable whiteboard to collaborate on getting some text right. With full version control behind it, so you - the owner - can roll-back anytime and anywhere. :) And Ta-da List, the sharable todo lists so you can get to your lists whenever, whereever and share a list among team members, project member or even clients! Everything is fully intgegrated with web, Email and RSS feeds, so you have no excuse to say you couldn't get to the data. There is security and protection against other snooping around in your data... really! So check them out!
	Friday, February 3 Sinus infection #Posted by Dreams on 08:32 Well, now that my head is exploding for the third time is several weeks, my nose runs marathons and my joints aches as if I'm 85 years old, I decided to stop by the doctor's office and get a check up. Turns out I have a left over Sinus Infection ("voorhoofdsholte ontsteking" in Dutch). My sister Isa had one last Fall and I do remember getting a bit sick shortly after a visit there. So it seems I still have it. Got an anti-biotics treatment and I called in sick today. I will probably sleep all day... :Z
	Wednesday, February 1 CoNGNes 2006 #Posted by Dreams on 20:07 Today, I spent all day at the CoNGNes 2006 in Nijkerk with RealOpen IT. We hosted several practical sessions on Novell and Linux, desktop and server management and office mobility tool (like Teamware and Omni). I gave a talk on Open-Xchange. Open-Xchange aka "Open Exchange" is a commercial, open source, groupware product to handle any company's Email and scheduling based solely on open standards, as opposed to MS Exchange closed .pst files. Open-Xchange integrates other commonly found (open source) Linux products in an easy to install and manage setup without sacrificing the open character. The best thing is that you can choose your own preferred client and Windows users can keep using Outlook through the Outlook OXtender that provides a MAPI<->IMAP interface.