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, August 29

Lyon

#Posted by Dreams on 11:26  

Second stop of our vacation: Lyon, France... Little did we know...


  
 

Monday, August 28

Troyes

#Posted by Dreams on 11:25  

First day of our vacation in Troyes, France.


  
 

Sunday, August 27

Vacation break

#Posted by Dreams on 10:10  

Petra and I are gone for 3 weeks on a well deserved vacation break... pfffew
One week travelling through France and Italy in small cozy hotels and bed&breakfasts to reach our final destination in Italy, where we'll stay for 2 weeks and be joined by Sjoerd, Martin, Femke, Fleur, Merel and spontaneous guests Arjen and Isa. Can't wait...


  
 

Wednesday, August 23

Dark Matter exists!

#Posted by Dreams on 12:08  

You can't see it, can't measure it, can't weigh it, can't detect it, but it exists!
Scientists agree that there is a proof that confirms a matter in the universe known as "dark matter". It fills the void between stars and galaxies and accounts for about 98% of the matter in the universe... but we can't see it. We just know it's there. :)
Old jokes about the stealth fighter come to mind... :D


  
 

Tuesday, August 22

Blog still gone

#Posted by Dreams on 22:37  

Wrote a second mail describing the problem in more detail. Hope this helps... I miss my good old Blog. After all these years and almost 2000 (!) posts! In the mean time, I'm posting drafts instead. The dates still get captured so I'll update once everything is restored, I guess...
/me crosses fingers


  
 

Sunday, August 20

Blog still missing

#Posted by Dreams on 22:35  

I checked the Blogger account and all settings are fine. All the other blogs are fine too, all except the ones on the blogspot ftp server. I get an error: "Login failed, can't set startup dir to your home directory: No such file or directory." It somehow lost track of where to store my files. However, the blog itself is also gone so maybe files were transfered/deleted and settings not updated... I'll write BloggerHelp and see.
As an ex-BloggerPro user I was able to ftp to their server using a login account. Maybe something got changed and screwed up...? Hope not!


  
 

Saturday, August 19

Blog gone

#Posted by Dreams on 09:33  

Somehow Blogger think my site is gone. The entire site, not just the blog page... Thanks, Martin, you were the first to tell me. Thanks for all the others too for letting me know. I'll look into it.


  
 

Friday, August 18

Pitt Tuition in 2006

#Posted by Dreams on 12:05  

While discussing tuition rates in Holland for College, I became curious what tuition would be now if I went to Pitt for Graduate school: Shock! Unbelievable!
I guess that is out of the question...


  
 

Google Browser Sync

#Posted by Dreams on 11:04  

"Google Browser Sync for Firefox is an extension that continuously synchronizes your browser settings ? including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords ? across your computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions."
Could be a major privay loophole, of course, but for me it is too useful to ignore. Netscape Communicator used to do this and I loved it. Since Firefox I had to go without and keep browsers in sync with manual copies and blablabla. This is great!


  
 

Thursday, August 17

Firefox crop circle

#Posted by Dreams on 16:33  

12 students from Oregon State Univ built a huge Firefox Crop Circle! Wow! Gorgeous! I'm impressed!


  
 

VMTN - Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge Winners

#Posted by Dreams on 15:30  

VMware annouced the winners of the Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge. It was a contest to see who could build a really useful and easy to use virtual server that was really useful. The FreeNAS server I am using at home won in the category Consumers. W00t! Congrats to Olivier!


  
 

Tuesday, August 15

The New Blogger

#Posted by Dreams on 19:45  

Google finally updated Blogger, check out The New Blogger: dynamic pages (like Wordpress), categories, more feeds, lay-out controle, access control, integration with Google Account for more easy monetizing with Adsense.
Check out the tour of the new features...


  
 

Sunday, August 13

DanceParade 2006

#Posted by Dreams on 22:17  

Saturday was the annual DanceParade in Rotterdam. Unlike previous years, however, the weather took a turn for the worst. So just 10 minutes after we left Arjen and Isa's home, we got treated to a real rain shower. Luckily, we could shelter under a bridge. We then continued to the Stadhoudersplein where the parade had already arrived - due to lack of people the parade moved at a much higher pace than usual - and we started to dance ourselves dry... somewhat. Petra bought an umbrella, Isa and Arjen had brought ponchos and we started to party anyway. About half way through, the sun broke and it became very warm and nice, but after about an hour big rainshowers moved over us once again and this time it didn't clear. :( Despite the rain, I had a great dance parade and I've managed to take 140-some pictures...


  
 

Thursday, August 10

Sony Ericsson M600i smart phone

#Posted by Dreams on 23:20  

Sony Ericsson has finally brought its first UIQ 3 device to the market, the M600i. This is the first of three new UIQ 3 smart phones to arrive this year from the company, although all three phones are very different in terms of the functionality they offer... Rea the story over Reg Hardware


  
 

Researchers Make Mount Etna Sing

#Posted by Dreams on 23:17  

Slashdot writes: "Predicting eruptions will become easier now scientists are using technology to translate the patterns in a volcano's behaviour into sound waves. The research project, which brings together experts from Europe and Latin America, digitally collects geophysical information on seismic movements before using data sonification to transform them into audible sound waves, which can then be 'scored' as melodies. The resulting 'music' is then analysed for patterns of behaviour and used to identify similarities in eruption dynamics and so predict future activity.'


  
 

Nikon D80

#Posted by Dreams on 22:58  

Meanwhile in Nikon-land, they have been busy all summer getting ready to introduce the Nikon D80. With 10 Mpx, new high-res image-processing engine (the thing that takes the CCD and gives you the JPG/RAW image), almost instant start-up at 0.18 sec. :impressive:, up to 100 frames in burst mode.. ah read the specs yourself! :) I'm curious about the the DPReview tests. But so far, I like it already. Good little D-SLR!


  
 

Intel open sources the Linux Graphics Driver

#Posted by Dreams on 22:50  

While nVidia and ATi keep close tabs on anything that has to do with their video drivers, Intel is about to open source their video drivers for the Intel 965 Express chipset.
More and more laptops are also with built-in GFX chips, much to the demise of the industry who claim those cards suck and they bring a bad name to their field.
Well, like it or not, with the whole open sourced maybe some of those anonymous ATi gfx wizards will help code the Intel drivers just for kicks and to get their name in the code... Hell, I would if I could!


  
 

Fuji DSLR also shoots infrared and UV

#Posted by Dreams on 22:46  

Fujifilm has made a D-SLR that will also record infrared (IR) and ultra-violet (UV) light in addition to the normal visible light. They're hoping to get some buyers from police and special forces, who needs those features for more than just kicks. :)
The Fujiflm FinePix S3 Pro UVIR has a 12 Mpx CCD and is expected to hit the shelves in September... for $1800. Kinda cool!


  
 

Tuesday, August 8

Open Source AJAX toolkits

#Posted by Dreams on 22:31  

Slashdot writes about 6 Open Source AJAX toolkits that have been compared, especially with respect to commercial toolkits like (the Dutch) BackBase and such... Interesting! :)


  
 

Sunday, August 6

Sony Alpha DSLR-A100

#Posted by Dreams on 22:50  

DPReview has a review of Sony's lastest digicam: the Sony Alpha DSLR-A100. It's an actual D-SLR, not dinky toy cam thingy. It's meant to compete with Nikon and Canon...
/me runs off to check the review


  
 

FFWD Heineken Dance Parade

#Posted by Dreams on 22:24  

FFWD dance parade 2005Only 6 nights, 5 days, until yet another FFWD Heineken Dance Parade! Woohoo! Can't wait! Lots of friends are going so it'll be fun. Loading batteries, clearing CF cards and cleaning lenses. Now for the choice of after party... ;)


  
 

Hyves.net

#Posted by Dreams on 22:20  

Oops I did it again... so sue me.
My sister Isa sent me a link to her Hyves page, where she'll blog a little and finally get am exsistence in Cyberspace. Well as much as I hate these oh-we-are-so-cool-and friendly-collection-of-friends sites, I couldn't leave her stranded and waste her energy, now could I? So I hyved a little space too: Christian@Hyves.net.
After Orkut, MySpace, Friendster and god knows how many other collect-your-friends sites, Hyve is yet another. Still reminds me forst of serious case of ther itch before I think of a bee's hyve. Or is that just me...?


  
 

So how do you code an AJAX Web page?

#Posted by Dreams on 22:16  

Martin sent me this link about a page explaining in detail and with examples: how do you code an AJAX Web page?
Great tip, Martin. Thanks!


  
 

Saturday, August 5

OpenRAW - RAW Survey 2006 results

#Posted by Dreams on 13:02  

OpenRAW, an initiative to get vendors to agree on an open RAW format as a standard to exchange, store and manipulate digital images, has the results of the 2006 RAW survey online.
In June, Sony responded to their letter containing the results of the survey. Sony said it was very helpful to get such a detailed survey with consumer information and would take it into account when planning and producing new products.
Interestingly, when people select any product as giving the best RAW editing/conversion results, they choose a different product for giving the best workflow. Means that people tend to use a personal set of tools for doing what they need to get done.


  
 

Thursday, August 3

Amis

#Posted by Dreams on 14:27  

LOL
Just by accident I found the company where I did my Master Thesis back in 1994-1995: Amis. They still exist and still work in the Oracle database world. Funny. I did my thesis on practical aspects of Object-Oriented Design and how a large RDBMS system could benefit from ODBMS properties. Very vague but a lot of fun to do. Learnt a lot of OOAD, OMT (now UML) and such.


  
 

Tuesday, August 1

Contour: revolutionary computer animation

#Posted by Dreams on 09:50  

WSJ has a cool story on a new way to animate computer images. The technique called Contour is very simple and cheap and may soon create life-like computer generated figures. I say, Final Fantasy XV: here we go!
"The technology can even substitute one actor's face for another's and create exact replicas of long-dead historical figures."


  
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