And I’m still skeptical about that GMail thing. Just because there was a news story on it on Mar 31, doesn’t mean it’s not an April Fool’s joke! at 2004-04-01 14:06:41
beige said: I’m pretty sure the gmail thing IS a hoax. That seems to be the going thought on /. and Fark anyway. Oh well, sad as it may be it’s good to see both Google and the NYT have a sense of humor. at 2004-04-01 15:47:52
(James Trott (UK))[http://www.wildhog.co.uk] said: Dude! Trippy post, i read through it, and at every point was like “know that, read that…” its amazing how fast information travels, and how wide, and how geek we are!
My sites down atm on hiatus, whilst i build a new PC then work on it from that. Drop me an email with ur MSN address in it!
“Follow the karmic adventures of a web developer / activist / mad scientist / bohemian as he travels the web in search of The Meaning of Life.”
Ever think about naming your kid in |_337 5p34|.Some people have thought about it. Here are a few of the gems: I’m considering naming my first-born child either Br4d or J4n37 I think I’ll name my daughter Riaa (Ree ah’) I have a friend named “Pascal” and his brother is named “Cobol”. I named my dog Haskell, he is a pretty 1337 |)06 I’m naming my first born “omg new baby ^_^” And here’s my own personal addition: I’ll name my baby “n00b Martin”, which will be funny when the kid is older. Bonus: n00b isn’t gender-specific :) If if Gmail is a hoax, it could be clever attempt at gaging demand for such a service — it DID make it to the front page of most web news sites. Okay, as of today there’s now a login & password form on the Gmail site. Are they just fucking with us now? According to PC Pro and a slew of other sites, Gmail is REAL and is NOT A HOAX! Google’s CEO said that their April fool’s joke was the advertisement of jobs on a lunar outpost. “It is April Fool’s Day. We were having fun with that announcement, but we are very serious about Gmail.” More on google’s Gmail:I don’t believe it’s coincidence that yesterday Yahoo! upped its free inbox size from 4MB to 25MB. They’re shaking in their boots. 4MB is the only compelling reason to use Yahoo over Hotmail. The only reason to use hotmail was that it is easy. I’m sure Google can make a simpler product, with more storage. Goodbye Yahoo! Hotmail’s History. Go Go Google! The new Google email service sounds like a free lunch for consumers — but there is a catch. Google plans to make money from the service by inserting ads into messages based in part on their content, effectively extending its AdSense programme for presenting contextual ads in Web pages to email. I was reading about the impending movie studios’ switch to digital prints in place of the traditional film. I don’t get this quote:> “Some digital cinema backers hope the technology helps curb piracy of first-run movies. Levin said 70 percent of known piracy stems from copies made using camcorders in theaters, and 70 percent of those copies have been traced to theaters in a six block area of Manhattan.”
Maybe I’m missing some crucial bit of info, how does projecting a digital film (as opposed to film film) prevent people from copying it using a camcorder? If anything, I think it’ll provide the opportunity for people to hook their DV-cam directly up to the projector and get a perfect digital copy. PLUS - there’s always the possibility of hijacking the satellite signal and getting a full & perfect copy of the original cinematic digital print! Exciting! Don’t think it can be done? Well, I beg to differ. I know a guy who hacked a satellite and has a TSR running on it at this very moment. I can’t tell you his name, though, ‘cause if I did, I might not wake up tomorrow. It could be that using ‘digital prints’ will negate the need for projectionists, in which case there would be no more *super-sweet* projection room ‘screeners’, but they didn’t mention projectionists. Either way, it could have been a little more specific. More warez for you, kind of. This site provides copies of tv shows! TVTorrents! Newsmap is damn cool. It looks at GoogleNews, then ‘draws’ the news, making the most-reported-on stories bigger, and less-reported-on-stories smaller. Lets you visually inspect “what’s new”. Have a kid? Never heard of a Waldorf Education? Check it out! Philosophy of a Waldorf Education.Goals of a Waldorf Education.PHP Code Beautifier - converts php scripts to pear compliant Complete Regex Editor for PHP!
Comments from my old blog:
mom said: Ok, i am being a mom, but!, you would name my grandchild WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!love mom at 2004-04-02 12:53:54
(kellie b)[http://nada] said: hey d - you’re always up to interesting stuff? you’re coming back to Canada, its sounding like…. what’s next? a little R&R before jumping into another cool project?
kb at 2004-04-04 03:52:16
kellie b said: oops - no ? intended at end of first sentence… lol. should have been a ! i was on a ro??ll… lol at 2004-04-04 03:54:53
I know a lot of you read slashdot, and I know that I post a lot of slashdot stuff on here. The thing is, I try to post what’s *interesting to me* from all the slashdot posts, as well as stuff that may have an uninteresting title, yet contain interesting content. So, I’m acting as your slashdot “cool stuff” filter. You don’t have to read it every day. I will post the good stuff for you. Likewise, I include the good stuff from boingboing, and about 30 other sites that I read on a regular basis. On Friday night Irena and I went to see “TANGO PASI?É‚ÄúN”, which has just recently sold out over 200 shows in a row in Italy. Much to our surprise it was only “pretty good”. Afterwards, we went for drinks at the Bulldog and had a great conversation until about 4am, when they closed and made us leave. We chatted for a while more, and I finally got to bed at 6am. The joke was on me, though, cause I’d promised to meet my friends at 8:30am to climb a mountain. Fuck. So, up I got at 8:30, and ran to meet them. I was 10 minutes late, but oh well. I can’t believe I climbed that fucker on 2.5 hours of sleep. It was 2 hours of constant walking to get to the top. Exhausting doesn’t really begin to describe it. I now know how/why everyone in Zagreb has a sweet tight butt. It’s from climbing this mountain. You see, it wasn’t me and 2 or 3 friends that climbed it. It was me, and Cvijeta, and Emina, and about 100 other students. Every saturday they have to climb it for their physical education class, which is mandatory. WHen they get to the top, Cvijeta stamps everyone’s “climb card” to prove that they did it. No climb - no pass. The embarassing part was when we were about 2/3 of the way up, and three 65-year-old-plus men zipped by us. WTF??? You see, that’s what old people do for fun over here — climb mountains. Unbelievable. They were *so* fit. We saw lots of old people on the mountain, going up and coming back down. There’s a restaurant at the top, so we had baked beans, sausage, and beer, and sat on the picnic tables outside. It was a beautiful day. Still, the 1.5 hour walk back down nearly killed me. We took a different, more picturesque path down, and I got some nice photos. I was pretty dead for the rest of the day, so I watched “The Kid” starring Bruce Willis, and “The Transporter” with Jason Statam (aka the driver from Lock Stock, and Snatch). The Kid was cute and cuddly, as are most Disney movies. The Transporter was fast, intense, and fun, as are most car-chase movies. Neither was particularly innovative (except for the oil-fight in Transporter), but both were a nice way to spend an exhausted afternoon. Then I got an SMS — “meet us at the main square at 9pm”. I thought they had to be kidding, but they weren’t, so I went. We went for a drink, and then I was tooo tired (2.5 hours of sleep, remember?). We all just went home. The Rum & Coke ensured that I fell asleep promptly. Sunday morning I went to the biggest flea market in the world with Emina, RachelM, Cassie, and their supervisor from the US, Olivia (yes, both our supervisors are named Olivia). We didn’t have anywhere near enough time at the flea market, though, as a lot of people had to leave in time for Palm Sunday mass. Oh well. Still good to get out in the morning, even if it was at 8:30am again. I’m soooooooooooo not a morning person. Then I vacuumed my apartment, opened the windows, shook out the sheets & blankets in the spring air, and laid on the bench in the garden for a while. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Also took some photos of “The Blooming”. Join the protest against using the terms “Tall, Grande, and Venti”, and force them to accept “Small, Medium, and Large”. Please write your MP and tell him/her not to make downloading music illegal. We really don’t want to become a copy of the US permission-based culture. We are freedom-based. It should stay that way. Get a pre-written form letter about this issue over at AndreMolnar.com. You can find the MP (and email) for your postal code here. Takes 1 second. Be sure to include your full mailing address in your letter/email, so that they may send a reply. MPs traditionally reply via Canada Post, and not via email, regardless of the media upon which the original message was sent. As a side note, i wonder if it’s piracy to copy another country’s policies? Hmmmm. Seinfeld & Superman together at last, subtly advertising? Wow. Great stuff. Click on Uniform and Hindsight :) Note that the clock on the wall of the room states the correct time. Nice touch :) Mogi: a location based game you play via cell phone looks very cool. Example: If you want to get a power-up by killing a nocturnal animal who dwells in trees, you must go to a real park in your city at night. Cool! New types of internet advertising are on the way. They didn’t spin the article this way, but this is what it amounts to: companies are going to start *paying consumers* to show them ads. The payments won’t be cash (yet), just free downloads, but this is still a great start! Dark side of Gmail. Privacy advocates are crapping themselves at the implications of Gmail. About 8 years ago (while playing Duke3D on a VR Forte Helmet) I had an idea for a 3D First-Person-Shooter style file manager. Well, [someone has finally gotten around to it](around to it. http://www.forchheimer.se/bfm/ “3d fps file manager”). What I originally envisioned was more of a 3D FPS security app, so that you could see all ports in 3D, and with different types of traffic, security risks, and users being represented by different avatars. System Administration can be boring, but this could at least make it boring in a beautiful environment. One of the April Fool’s jokes that I took seriously: 1st Annual March for Web StandardsUSB Keychain/MP3/Camcorder/2MP Digital Camera. It even recharges when plugged into your USB port. Genius! Prediction: 2 species of Cell Phone 1) Something in the form factor of a USB Keychain will soon replace non-PDA cell-phones, utilising voice dialing and input instead of lots of buttons. The focus is on media-capture, super-simplicity, spontenaeity, and portability. Has no screen for data-manipulation or playback (screen decreases portability), but does have connectors for external playback. 2) Something in the form factor of today’s Treo/Smartphone/PocketPCs whose focus will be data-input and manipulation. The focus is on media-manipulation, local playback, and data access. Has a screen for manipulation and playback. Note: I did not mention battery life or storate capacity, because I’m taking for granted that within 5 years both will be great (>24 hours for battery, and >1TB for capacity). Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe the future is more like NEC’s PenPC that I mentioned a few months ago. I could picture the USB-PC mentioned above having a projector built into it, which would keep it very portable, as well as offering a large display (given a vertical surface). Or maybe Phillips e-Paper will be an option. As always, the future is exciting :) Sensational Phone: tries to tie into all your 5 senses. Sound Example: It recreates the sense of directional sound with the help of GPS (Global Positioning System). The other caller’s voice would appear to come from the left or right, in front or behind to correspond with the actual location in relation to the listener. Very cool! Zero Install — the Linux packaging/install system of the (near) future. Reminds me of alias “Zero Cool” played by Jonny Lee Miller (aka Crash Override) in the 1995 movie “Hackers”, co-starring Angelina Jolie (aka Acid Burn) and Matthew Lillard (aka Cereal Killer).
Comments from my old blog:
(andre)[http://www.andremolnar.com] said: Thanks for the link - lets hope that this whole copyright thing gets put waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back on the back burner - seeing as the Liberals have a lot more stuff on their mind as of late. at 2004-04-06 11:42:28
I totally hear you about the metric thing… but even better, try talking to somebody who wants to know your weight in STONE… The Irish girl I’m dating had NO idea what 160 lbs translated to, and she was like “What is 160/14?” To which I replied “What the hell conversion are you trying to do???” :) But thanks to Google Calculator (the coolest thing ever), I know that 160 pounds = 11.4285714 stone. :) at 2004-04-07 16:02:28
derek said: I read something a while ago about the actual weight of “1 Stone” fluctuating, because the definition of what “1 Stone” is is actually a percentage of the Queen’s weight. So, new Queen means new value for Stone. Couldn’t find supporting documentation on Google, though, so maybe it was just a bad dream ;) at 2004-04-07 16:08:53
(andre)[http://www.andremolnar.com] said: You shitting me - Tell me you might still be in Europe on May 17th or 18th before flying back. My flight into Budapest is on the 17th.
If you wanna stick around for an extra day or two - I’ve got a condo in Pest where you can crash.
andre at 2004-04-08 11:35:13
(andre)[http://www.andremolnar.com] said: James Trott - thought I would let you know that version 2.0 isn’t working at the moment -
Microsoft VBScript runtime error ‘800a01a8’
Object required: ‘objRootNode’
/main.asp, line 9 at 2004-04-08 12:23:01
(James Trott (UK))[http://www.wildhog.co.uk] said: I broke it… it wont work till v2.00 now, i did it on purpose, personal reasons! at 2004-04-11 15:35:36
Here’s a quote from The Petrolia Discovery website: “When you ask folks today about the birthplace of the world’s oil industry, a body can usually expect to get answers ranging anywhere from Texas to Timbuktu… and usually a lot of puzzled looks besides. It’s just a fact that most people have absolutely no idea about the REAL origin of the oil industry - which, incidentally, began in a little section of Southwestern Ontario known today as Oil Heritage District.”
Yes, that’s right. Us Hard Oilers (people from Petrolia) are responsible for the war(s) in Iraq. We discovered oil. It’s our fault!
Check out the Town of Petrolia website, where you can see the town mascot, “Darren the Oil Derrick” :)
Incidentally, I spent a summer working at one of the world’s first oil fields, and from time to time the random pic that accompanies each post is me covered in oil (not dirt) :) at 2004-04-08 16:49:58
(Danijela)[http://www.zamirnet.hr] said: If you ask the right:) person at the right time;) about how to get to Athens from Dubrovnik, you may get lucky:)) at 2004-04-08 18:13:11
mom said: just as added info, when i was growing up in the eek!!!!!!!!50’s chewing the tar ish substance called gum that lay in the oil gumbeds, was our substiture for real gum. it did leave your teeth a nasty colour. we also liked to sit on the jerker lines that ran wells, they only moved back and forth, but hey, it was a free ride. I still live here and still love the smell of oil. at 2004-04-09 01:48:52
You look really adorable, happy and healthy in this photo with the computers… It makes me smile to see you so glowing. Have a safe adventure….. at 2004-04-18 17:31:01
James Trott (UK) said: Hey D,
Thanks for the birthday message, your right 20’ frickin 1, imagine how im feeling! Actually im feeling pretty damn on top of the world. E-Mail me once your back in canada on the permanent like.
Best Wishes Mate
James at 2004-04-19 09:05:26
mom said: have an amazing trip hon, and be safe. email when you can, love ya, mom and breslin at 2004-04-19 15:11:18
(beige)[http://www.ratajik.com/stationripper/] said: Hey, check this out. StationRipper. You turn it on and it MP3ifies all the songs coming off a particular internet radio station, but it strips out the ads and station IDs and makes individual MP3s of the songs themsleves. Slick! Now I can get MP3s of all those cowboy songs. :) at 2004-04-22 14:33:02
ben said: Happy Birthday tomorrow. I know you’ll be in transit. what have you been listening to? I’m listening to the dB’s, Television, the Replacemants, the Jam, Camera Obscura, Trembling Blue Stars, Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, the Softies, The Monochrome Set. We’re moving to a better apartment soon. one with a picket fenced in front yard. and pugs allowed. much closer to work. i can walk. And it will be less than we are paying now. So what are you doing the whole time on the trains to keep from going crazy? at 2004-04-25 19:09:47
James Trott (UK) said: Happy Birthday D-Rock!
Have a great trip, get in touch soon! at 2004-04-26 10:47:51
beige said: Pugs allowed? at 2004-04-26 14:55:19
Mandy :) said: DEREK!!! Happy Birthday!! I can’t wait for you to come back cos i’ve missed you! I know you’ll have a billion and 5 people to call, so if you could fit me in somewhere circa the billion and 3rd i’ll be the happiest camper in the world ;) Have a safe safe trip and swing by the eiffel tower for me, it is the city of love!
all my love D!
AD at 2004-04-26 18:03:00
mom said: i know i emailed you, but just thought i would tell the world what a great place it is because you were born!!!HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the best son a mom could have. I love you hon, and keep having a fabulous time!mom at 2004-04-26 19:19:36