Forest of Links

Idiots

2007-11-26T09:15:00.000-08:00

This blog has been dead for so long it's not even funny. Yet, some douchebag take the time to paste their ignominious spam in comment on random post and force me to clean up.

No more I say! Comments are turned off for good.

Did you know that 95% of all traffic on the Internet is spam? This is my small contribution to make it drop to 95% (I know, there's little difference, this is due to rounding)

Please keep this blog dead. Thank you for not reading it.

Remember me~!

2006-08-27T01:08:00.000-07:00

This is where I'm testing the windows live blog editor thingy.

Free Web Probulation

2006-04-13T22:46:00.000-07:00

Free as in no charge. Or no upfront charge. There will be a price though.

I several time got caught thinking it would be dandy and convenient, as a crafty consumer, to get some insurance quote over that new thing, you know, the internet they are talking about.

Everybody does it. It's even easier than non-prescription all herbal Valium or those things I get advertized in my inbox.

Unfortunately, this process, as much as they claim is protecting my privacy, stops short of asking from a stool sample for just getting a quote. Yes, I'm going to disclose my last 5 years of addresses, current income, marital status, work address, SSN, let them probe my background history and more. Then you get a quote. And that is free. The only cost is that you gave up the accurate description of the marketing profiler's wet dream.

I'll pass. It's not worth it.

The wrong fight

2006-03-29T13:28:00.000-08:00

Microsoft Cuts Price of MSN Dial-Up

Why you ask? Well, to undercut AOL of course. Why you ask again? Because AOL just jacked up their price for shitty dialup from $22/month to $26/month.
Then there are alot more question coming up. Most obvious are "People are still on dialup?" "People are paying $22/month for dialup?" "Why haven't they all switched to the $10/month isp yet?" or less obvious, "AOL? WTF?"

Most funny is AOL's motivation for the price hike, I kid you not:

The move comes little more than a month after rival AOL announced its decision to increase the price of its most popular unlimited dial-up access plan to $25.90 per month in order to nudge subscribers towards adopting its new High Speed broadband service.

So the point is to scare people into broadband. Guess it'll scare them away from AOL. If those people don't want broadband, increasing the price of what they think is good enough is not gonna make them get broadband. And in any case, I'd be more tempted to get broadband from my local cut rate DSL (my area has 768Kbps throttled DSL for $16/month) than overpriced shitty content no added value AOL broadband. It does not take a rocket science degree in business and marketing to understand that shaking the tree, price hikes and forced pitching is not good for customer retention.

It must be that company where all coworkers are monkeys.

How to not do it: $500 TB server

2006-03-27T21:18:00.000-08:00

I'm a sucker for that kind of thing. So I had to read the article and come back disapointed.

Terabyte file server the wrong way

I like the idea of one giant amout of disk space concentrated in one place. Terabyte is just about to become affordable (back in the old days, I remember I spent $500 on a 340 MB hard drive!) And I admit, so much disk space feels like a lot of power. However, power comes with responsiblility. By cutting corners and getting the absolute cheapest crap available on the net (and discounting shipping and handling fees) you can build it. Sort of.

Point by point:

- 4 no-name 250 GB disk. $81 bucks each. Not only you get a no-name disk, but only a 6 month warranty. Checked Newegg, they have 250 GB Sata (more on SATA in the next point) for $84, of course, does not include shipping.

- With the crappy Celeron MB/CPU combo, you get 2 two-channel ide connectors. For a total of 4 devices to connect. Unfortunately, once you connect those 4 HD you can't connect your cd-rom drive to install your OS. And if you disconnect one drive to replace it with a cdrom, the 4th disk won't obviously be available for the install, that's messed up. You should have bought SATA drives. They don't share a bus 2 by 2, you can have more than 4 devices (provided you're smart when you get your MB) this would have left the Mobo IDE for the cdrom.

- You should have an OS disk just for that. Add one HD, install the OS on it and secure it. Don't mix OS, Applications and Data. Keep things separate.

- You're willing to build a one TB server, but there is not safety net. I'm pretty sure you ain't gonna play DJ with dvd-rom to backup that much data. Add another drive and build a raid5 array. At least it's somewhat failsafe.

- It's not $500 because it runs Windows. Last time I checked, Windows wasn't free. So add in the price of it.

All in all, to be done correctly, to the base $500, you need to add:
- Extra 250GB: $85
- Extra HD for OS: $50
- Windows XP: $85 - $140 from home to pro, OEM, if you can find it at that price.

Then again, Newegg has 500 GB for $290, so all that trouble of building a new server and all, you might just want to add two HD to your existing PC and call it good.

Personnally, I'll be waiting another 18 month and purchase 2 1TB hard drive for $310 each at Amazon.com/NewEgg, and build a nice mirrored volume in my current computer.

Not that I hate commercials

2006-02-28T20:07:00.000-08:00

I got caught on the stupid Comcast commercial, where they advertize their stupid bundle Internet+Phone $59.99. Fuck it. I have both from Comcast, how come I'm not getting the sweet deal? Read again. $59.99 for the first three month. Right. Could be $5.99 for the first three month. What am I? A 10 yo with a 10 second attention span? What happens after 3 month? Well, it don't say. I won't look it up. But I'm sure it won't go down. Screw them. Screw me for listening to them.

In other news I also hate commercials for medicine. WTF. It's not enought the evil drug companies lobby my doctor and his employer to stuff their shit down my throat? They want to turn me into a drug demanding drone? I don't think so. The only drug I'm asking my doc are Valium and Vixodin. But only for relaxation and pain. Promise.

Online scam?

2006-02-25T22:15:00.000-08:00

Can't be!

I was just going through my spam folder in gmail, and I saw one of these fake ebay email. This one was slightly different. Instead of the usual "we're investigating your account, please login here or we'll suspend your account" style of email, it was a little more subtle. It was worded as a buyer's question (interestingly, I've never sold anything on ebay, but I guess when you're a scammer-spammer you don't really care about details) and the content was a mildly threat from someone claiming he bought an item from me, and he was gonna report me.

I should add gmail correctly flagged that one as fishing. Not that I would fall for this, but I'm pretty sure my awareness for those things is slightly above average.

More funny is the item # quoted in the email. 5801824341. It'll probably vanish in a few days, so I'll printscreen it here (click on it to actually read it):

In other news, how would you like to receive free text messages on your cell phone? Join the biggest online community of people that have cell phones or something like that? Yes? That's great. You probably don't know what I'm talking about. There:
http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008835.html
http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008792.html
But Google is a better friend, caching old stuff for you and all:
View the original post in Google cache

I can see how Russell got himself trapped in that one. Sign up to a service, half read the agreement that contains burried misleading language (or don't read it at all, like anyone else) because the previous page had a huge spinning FREE! TOTALLY FREE! NO CATCH! WE'RE GIVING IT AWAY! animated flash graphic. 35 days later, you get a bill for sms received from your carrier.

I was in Belgium last XMas and I was amazed how many SMS (text message) scam crap was advertized everywhere. I guess I'm getting too old. I use my phone to place calls. It does not even sing to me when it rings. It just rings! wow :)

Peep Show

2006-02-24T21:20:00.000-08:00

The probably the funniest pee your pants funny show on BBCa. Crippled by the american way of doing tv though (commercial every 7 minutes)

Still, they have the balls to air words like (cover your ears and poke your eyes out) shit, shitting and more shit. Cock muncher is also uttered. But fuck is blanked out (there are limits I guess)

The content is hilarious in a British way. The characters have enough mean quirckiness to keep you interested and the writers are not shy: one of the heros is pissing all over his coworker/women he loves office and drawers.

- What happened?
- It's not piss!

I just love it. And I love the title too.

2006-02-17T21:13:00.000-08:00

Kind of a funny rant from Russel Beatie in this entry. I understand that his thing is the mobile world and especially mobile apps. Hoever, not everyone is on the go. Most of us in IT sit behind a huge (lucky like me 3) screen and stare at Windows all day (ouch, could be luckier).

I'm currently involved in a distibuted project. Oregon site, manager in LA, outsourcing drones in 2 locations near Boston. Parent company in PA. In OH too. The official methos of communication and information sharing is ... email. Yep. Target with the TO field, shower everyone w/CC.

So I would be happy to do just chat sessions sometimes with more than one site. Quick question, quick answer style. With a forum like format, or self building FAQ. Not hard, someone has a question, another has an answer. If you have the same question come up 6,985,041 you can save alot of breath by just pointing at the FAQ (and stupidity too)

If companies are developing new stuff using decade old technology, some are using 5 decade old technology... And don't get me started with phones!

Do I have a bolt fetish?

2006-02-17T12:13:00.000-08:00

I'm wondering about this as I am gathering suyplies to make my own bean bag
(not to sit on, just to rest my camera for close range macro-like
photography.

I'm really thinking about fitting one bag with a tripod mount. Home made
with nice nuts and bolts from Lowes. It's not necessary, but I think it
would be nice. Do I have a bolt fetish or something?

Preview this!

2006-02-03T14:33:00.000-08:00

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,124595,00.asp

First IE 7 Beta 2 Bug Found
Security researcher needed just 15 minutes to find a flaw in Microsoft's browser.
An independent researcher needed just 15 minutes to find the first bug in the Beta 2 preview release of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 browser.Tom Ferris, of Mission Viejo, California, published his findings just hours after Microsoft released the beta code. His findings are posted online

Cool.

A dude ran a security tool that he wrote to test Microsoft's browsers. On a beta. And he found a bug. Wait, it's not even beta 2, it's beta 2 preview. That is, close to beta 2 but still with plenty of bugs in, even more than there will be in beta 2.

Wow.

In other shoking news, smoking cigarettes causes cancer.

Daytime TV is the best

2006-02-02T13:47:00.000-08:00

Daytime TV is the best, because you get to watch the stupidest shows on broadcast network. I'm watching Starting Over on UPN, did not even know that existed before, really wished I had not found out about it.

But really, that's not the best part. It's the stupidest commercial for the most stupid things. Why would you want to make a penny shine like that? Why would you pick the cheapest Lasik surgery people? They really do insist on the $299 per eye. And ever 500,000 procedures done so far.

Wow, kind of slaughterhouse fashion. You know it's safe because it is cheap. You know eyesight is the most important sense to you. Go ahead and have a trained monkey shine a high power laser through your eyes. It's safe. And you know the dude is gonna care about you because he's doing 625 other procedures that day. You go ahead. It's a good idea. From $299 per eye.

Blast from the Creepy Past

2006-01-30T16:17:00.000-08:00

I admit, I had to code stuff for Windows 3.1 (I can't call it developping, it is more aking to hacking the crap out of the system) and I sure do not have dear memory of the time.

One creepy detail (which is still kind of relevant now) is terminology for common things. When everyone think of the mouse pointer as a (...) pointer, MS called it a cursor. Just because. What about the blinkyblink thingy where the text is supposed to come out of when you type? (that was a perfectly grammatically sounds sentences, wasn't it?) Well, they called that a caret. What a carrot? nope, caret. Just because too. Or maybe because cursor was already taken.

One of the most fantastic feature of Windows was that, for some unimaginable reason, an application could hide the Mouse Cursor. To do so, just call the ShowCursor function as is:

ShowCursor(false);

To show it again,

ShowCursor(true);

That was simple.

Whare's the catch?

Hiding the cursor would hide it for the whole Windows desktop. Obviously making other application kinda hard to work with at the same time. Negating all the (feeble) benefit of multitaking in Windows 3.1 (I know, I'm high, multitaking in Windows 3.1 is like snow in Hawaii)
You must call ShowCursor(true) exactly as many time as you did the opposite ShowCursor(false). That one sucks. I guess you have to be careful, or at least know how to count.
If your application crashes while the cursor (aka pointer) is hidden, well, you're boned. If Windows is not crashed, well, it's pretty unusable. No more visible mouse.

Obviously, MS fixed that crap long time ago, but it's a good memory for old folks like me. Also gives all of us a good excuse to write really crappy software and make a financial success out of it.

Also, I just checked, in XP the mouse cursor is called pointer (control panel, mouse) and the caret is called cursor. But still, the API is ShowCursor() and ShowCaret(). Mmm... caret soup!

I was wrong

2006-01-30T09:34:00.000-08:00

Crap. Big Mamma's house #1 at box office report after this weekend. Beating Nanny McPhee 2:1. What a load of crap. People will swallow shit by the boatload and still be happy to be charged $8 a piece. Not that Annapolis or Nanny McPhee would be so inherently better. But as least I would not be as wrong.

Newsflash: lacrosse is here

2006-01-26T18:29:00.000-08:00

Whatever lacrosse is. Yeah, like hockey minus the ice. Just as much kick in the face action. Probably a local thing though. (local as in PDX). With season tickets as low as $90. It's probably as dumb and pointless as something else, it'll probably be a great success.

Now I'd love to see more rugby. That's not one of those sissy sports. That's real.

Movie Review: Big Mamma's House 2

2006-01-26T18:17:00.000-08:00

How can I review a movie that's not out yet? Simple, I watch the preview. On TV. Every 10 minutes.
Don't see it. It surely not as good as the first one (have not seen that one either) but the first one is a piece of crap too. It's ok to make transgender/fat jokes because I'm black kind of movie. Inane (lack of) plot.
All crap.
It does not matter what I say, flocks of idiotic sheep will flock to the theater. I predict #2 at box office, just behind Nanny McPhee (the ugly looking Mary Poppins)

Quick note to advertisers

2006-01-25T21:59:00.000-08:00

Especially when shooting a car commercial, especially when the car is supposed to be kinda sporty, it is not advised to show close up of the car do a sudden lane change. Just witnessed it on the latest Lexus IS250/350 commercial. No matter how sporty and good handling the car is, it looks like a huge lump with body roll and shows an obvious reluctance to change direction.
Gee, you can only do that when you advertise a formula one car. Maybe a BMW M3. But everyone knows your Lexus is only sporty-looking, it's just another bland soft luxury car.

Buy a DVD?

2006-01-23T21:17:00.000-08:00

I'm already not sure I'd buy a DVD. After all, I would want to be sure I want to watch it somewhere around 4 or 5 times or more, just to make it worthwhile compared to renting it from my local blockbuster hollywood video, several times.

Then again, Netflix is there to save me from the evil of poor selection and weird looking (and smelling) patrons. Not to mention teenage workforce who don't give a shit.

Back to the original question: buy a DVD, I don't think so. Why then all the advertisement for B-grade movies all over the place? Well, it's a subliminal message: it's out on DVD, go rent it.

Now, does anyone actually go buy it? And does anyone has ever really bought the PSP version? Now I really don't have an answer for that.

Arrr! I'll take some music with that hook!

2006-01-20T13:30:00.000-08:00

Digital Music Sales Triple in 2005

Increase could be a sign that anti-piracy efforts are working.

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,124434,00.asp

Really?
Or maybe buying music online is becoming mainstream (like buying from amazon.com). Or the fantastic success of iPod+iTunes combo is snowballing. Or people are getting lazy, finding music on P2P is increasingly painful/risky (RIAA after you, Virus, spyware); P2P's never been too mainstream anyway, it's kind of a geeky nerdy stuff. Or the initial number was so low that tripling it is no big deal.

Wait. A little bit of all. But the tripling thing is a good suspect. From $380 mil to $1.2 bil. You'd think that's a big number in itself. But in a typical PC World fashion, you don't get any point of reference (like total Music sales?, total entertainment industry?)

Wait. It's world wide sales number. And now yes, it sounds totally ridiculous. The average person on earth went from buying 0.05% of one track per year to 0.15% of one track per year.

Now really. Thinking piracy is recessing is worse than wishful thinking, it's appalingly stupid.

EVDO Rocks!

2006-01-19T12:36:00.000-08:00

Especially when it's company paid. I kind of weaseled into getting this Verizon EVDO pccard. Now I get broadband on the road, in the train, in the rain, does not include green eggs and ham though. I'll take the high speed connection nonetheless.

Can you hear me now? Nope, it's for data, dude.

American Idle

2006-01-17T18:33:00.000-08:00

Tonight is the first night. It's actually running EST I guess. The new season of American Idle. Idol. iDol? No, that would be an Apple product.

Get ready for another edition of bad singing, dreadful acting, poor ethical standards (and really high on drugs judges, no I'm not looking at you Paula) With totally lacking credibility.

The only regret is that never-smiling annoying terrible singer/actor/performer Scott Savol (or was it Sabol?, Savon?, Avon?) can't reenter again.

Maybe this year they'll give a chance to a black chick, because last year, the only one that could consistently sing (just could sing, sometimes outstandingly) were the black chicks (oops, PC filter: african american females) I'm pretty sure this was a coincidence, what was not was the stupid rally behind Blondish-no personality chick and I'm-a-rocker-but-I-can-t-sing-to-save-my-life dude. Appalling results. But what did I expect, this is TV, and this is Fox.

Rejoyce and brace yourself because tonight show is 2 hours long (and one of the cheapest to produce, auditions, lots of laugh, little content, alot of stupid Simon comments. I hope he's in a bad mood)

Bender Rules!

2006-01-09T20:36:00.000-08:00

Hey, do I preach to you when you lie stoned in the gutter? No! So Beat it!

When I die...

2006-01-06T22:14:00.000-08:00

When I die, I wanna be buried face down, so anyone who doesn't like me can kiss my ass.
-Red Foreman

For some reasons, I've been watching this 70's stupid show, and Red is by far the funniest character. This is the funniest quote from him.

I know everything about the 70's, I was born in the 70's. At least then, a man could speak his mind.

No Thanks

2006-01-04T21:12:00.000-08:00

Innovative marketing ploy: lure you with something you don't want. If I understand correctly, Subway is having some kind of sweepstake where you can get some gym subscription. There's a picture of a scratch and discover your price: lose weight.

I'd scream: "Are you calling me fat? Are you saying I need a diet?"

That's fantastic. However un-PC that is, it is well known that on TV, people just want to see young, slim, fit, healthy people. Especially in commercials. You want the viewer to identify to a positive image.

I don't see how telling me that I'm fat and I need more exercise will help them sell more (icky tasting) sandwiches.

This time it's gonna work

2005-12-09T12:36:00.000-08:00

Assuming there is no evil filter to the emails going out. I do not think
there is, then again, it could be an evil hidden filter.

We'll see in a few minutes.

This is a test

2005-12-09T06:43:00.000-08:00

This is only a test.

A Whole Bunch of Dohickies

2005-11-07T23:14:00.000-08:00

http://extensions.roachfiend.com/howto_bug.html
http://www.xulplanet.com/tutorials/mozsdk/
http://www.mozilla.org/docs/dom/domref/dom_shortTOC.html

Whacking!

2005-11-07T15:00:00.000-08:00

Especially good is the see-wep-crack 5 minutes video demo with obnoxious German folk music. A must see.
http://whoppix.hackingdefined.com/index.php/Main_Page
And what about these?
http://stashbox.fromtheshadows.tv/

Pretty Simple

2005-11-04T16:12:00.000-08:00

Using JavaMail is pretty simple. At least according to this article:

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-10-2001/jw-1026-javamail.html

I'm in the process of (re)sharpening my Java skills by rewriting one of my dotnet projects in Java. No I will not be translating code. Hopefully, this will be 2.0 quality (or maybe 1.0 since the dotnet version was never released. Oh, wait, none of my crappy home projects ever get released :) If there is enough demand, I'll publish some of them (hahaha, my audience here is 1, so there's little chance of that)

Everything Sucks!

2005-11-01T20:46:00.000-08:00

My job first, but these people have a different opinion. Web 2.0 sucks. Blogging sucks. Flock sucks. Wow. It is really funny though. They sound serious, but the fight is kind of irrelevant. Flock? Who cares.

http://flocksucks.wordpress.com/

Update: after reading between the lines, I tend to agree that flock has little value. However, their fight over Web 2.0 sounds a little better justified. Because before you know, Web 2.0 sounds like a new bubble. People don't learn. Kudos to flocksucks.

Not New

2005-10-31T20:29:00.000-08:00

This is not new. But this is good. And cheap.

http://www.gumstix.com/spexwaysmalls.html

Actually featured in the high altitude balloon described here:

http://www.srcf.ucam.org/%7Ejac208/pegasus/pegasus1.html

Version 1.0 did not use gumstix: http://vpizza.org/%7Ejmeehan/balloon/

From the friendly people at HackADay

Counterproductive Crosspromotion

2005-10-23T12:19:00.000-07:00

Let's face it, we're just dumb consumers. We'll jump on any good deals like flies on a turd. This is why you get things like free cell phone when you sign up for 2 years or rebates on things you buy. Why not discount the price directly? Cuz you're a dumb consumer that's why.

However, I just saw a good one. If you have Directv, sign up for Starz (and the shitload of channels it comes with) and get, yes, a $20 gift car from Barns & Nobles. Get more TV, so you can ge more books. Then not watch TV? Mmm...

Make is my friend

2005-10-22T21:31:00.000-07:00

From the make people.

Good led and transistors 101. I glanced at it and thought it's clear and simple enough for me to understand.
http://www.iguanalabs.com/1stled.htm

Paper cars. Cool. There's a Ford GT40 and a DeLorean. Wow.
http://grumlt.citrina.lt/CitroPasakos/CitroZaislai.html

Good collection of satyrical content. Or is it just cynical?
http://www.blacktable.com/archive/idioticthings.htm

Awesome!

2005-10-21T23:45:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, as a programmer, I get my head under a rock for a long long time regarding certain subjects. My favorite: XML. After several years of buzz, well, it looks like they are on to something (j/k). So there I am trying to figure out some XML-RPC API in general (and Blogger specifically) and there is surprisingly very little context infor that makes sense to me. All I can find are good old dump of what is actually transmitted over the wire with xml and all. But really, I don't care about that. I don't want to generate xml. I just want to call a method and stick a few params in it. This is what the XmlRpc lib is supposed to do. But no. Can't find simple code examples. But great detail about the plumbing, I find:

http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/10/15/dive.html

I got flash!

2005-10-19T20:51:00.000-07:00

Apparently I'm addicted to flash games. This one is not really a game, it's more a rendom hypnotic animation. But that's the point of getting addicted: it's hypnotic.

http://files.deviantart.com/f/2004/188/8/7/gridgame.swf

And this one is a really intense click and jump. But lots of clicking. Gotta bother coworkers.

http://www.we-are-freex.com/projects/GunRun/GunRun.htm

Finally!

2005-10-19T15:05:00.000-07:00

This has been one of my pet peeves for a long time. Long after everyone switched to Hotmail and Yahoo, and then to Gmail, you still had to cope with the default mailto: links. That is, whatever is configured in your OS is launched (and on this laptop, it is Lonus Notes, AAAAAAAARGH) So this is the solution:

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2005/10/18/...

The man can shoot a picture...

2005-10-18T21:39:00.000-07:00

http://beenbusy.blogspot.com/

Too bad you don't know french

2005-10-17T01:14:00.000-07:00

Cuz you could read and understand this...

http://www.levif.be/Weekend/CMArticles/ShowArticle.asp?articleID=641§ionID=4

A little hard

2005-10-17T00:58:00.000-07:00

This was not easy to figure out at first (I mean, in the first 3 minutes) but it's actually pretty funny. If you're into that kind of humour that is.

http://longorshort.blogspot.com/

Random good find

2005-10-17T00:17:00.000-07:00

About once in a million years, I find a good blog by hitting the next blog button in blogger. I only do that when I'm really bored, because I know I'll find 45% spam blogs, 22% drunken sports fan and the rest college/highschool students bitching about their life and minute annoyances. So here it is. Very well worded. Open and not rabid for a change.

http://benjaminhartman.blogspot.com/

Yeah... I'm gonna need all your cash...

2005-10-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

Hi, my name is John Johnston, it is not my real name for I work for the secret services. I'm gonna need all your available cash so I can mark it with a microship. Please leave it under a table there. Do not talk to anyone about this. Thank you for your cooperation.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-1814531,00.html

It's daring, but the scammed people are particularely stupid. You're supposed to use that little thing in your head called your brain.

Just don't look suspicious.

2005-10-16T11:07:00.000-07:00

You just can't help it. When you know you're being observed you become slightly self conscious. Even if you don't care. It's there, in your brain. And even if you're not aware of any observation, you may be having the wrong attitude or posture or behavior or trigerring other's alarm of suspiciousness.

That's especially bad when you're french, living in London and carrying a backpack in the subway. This dude had an Orwellian experience.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,16132,1575532,00.html

To the police defense I should say that it must be really hard to deal with the unrealistic expectation that they will prevent any terrorist attack in the subway forever. However, my experience with European police (not british though) is that every policeman I met were just about as smart as a bacterium or maybe a kitchen knife.

Even then, it's a scary thought. The crime of looking suspicious should not be enough to be the subject of those terribly invasive searches, loss of privacy and being filed in some police file forever (do you really think they will get rid of his fingerprint and DNA records? I did not think so)

In conclusion, don't go to London. London sucks. But if you do, don't take the subway. But if you have to, don't look suspicious. But if you do, well, don't run, cuz they'll shoot you.

Less work!

2005-10-16T00:47:00.000-07:00

I just realized I did not post anything in the last 4 days. What's up with that? Grrr... I'm more busy at work. Let me use this entry to state officially that it sucks. Drats.

On an unrelated note, I remember reading some bloger's advice to newbies at blogging, one of those was proofreading. What a bunch of hoey.

My advice is not to proofread anything. It's a blog, it's not a novel or a new country's constitution. It's supposed to be natural writing. Just spit out thought in a semi-organized fashion and you're good. If your readers wanted some nicely polished words and dumb content, they would be reading their local news paper.

Yet another post without a link though.

Linux is better than fiction

2005-10-16T00:41:00.000-07:00

Usability is in my opinion the biggest issue with everyday use of Linux. Linux on a user desktop, that is. Windows is easier to install/maintain. Just try to install wireless networking hardware in Linux and you'll see. I know it's getting better every day. But still, it's far from perfect.

I'm using Linux as much as I can during my daily routine (at home that is). It's my web browsing machine, it rips CDs, makes iso images, it's my DAR (digital audio recorder. A fancy name for the tool that record the radio from the sound card line in) So in a typical user fashion, I just want things to work. And I don't want to fight for it.

So yesterday night, I tackled 3 of my pet peeves. Even though my linux box sits next to my windows box in my office, the linux box is headless. I use the desktop through Xvnc server and client. My Fedora distribution came with VNC 4.0 so I just had to do some config here and there to get it working. Comes my pet peeve #1: can't copy/paste between Window and remote session. After a long time of figuring out, it turns out you must run the vncconfig applet on the X desktop, and leave it running for the clipboard thing to run! That's really stupid, but now I'm able to copy URL in firefox running in X and paste them in my mighty home made little posting tool. I know, that tool should be run under Linux, but you see, it's written in C#, and it happens that it does not run well at all under mono because it uses a rich edit control. maybe in 2013 mono will catch up with all the Windows widgets. I could also have written this tool in Java, but C# and Visual Studio are sooooo nice. (and I suck at Java gui programming too)

#2 pet peeve: no web site looks right because they all use those god damned Microsoft fonts like verdana, tahoma, and georgia. This blog included. So I found those explanations there:
http://www.kegel.com/linux/tt.html
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/stable/x/xfree86-setup.html
Not sure if the cache rebuild and the likes are necessary but it took several attempts before it actually worked, so I'm not sure any more. I also rebooted. Probably not necessary. My uptime before reboot was 47 days. My record uptime was 235 days on the same computer, but I must admit I did not use it as much as I do now.

And finally, for last is something I did not quite solve. Just improved a bit. The only feature that would sell me Windows XP over Win2k (because really, Win2k was the best MS operating system ever) is the cleartype font smoothing. The one that works especially best with a LCD. It also works great on a CRT, tons better than standard antialias. Sadly, Linux's version is nowhere as good as MS. But I still could tweak it by finding some applet in the Control Center thingy.

Well, it turns out, when I use my posting tool to write entries (and not the butt ugly Blogger interface) I can rant for quite a few sentences. If you read this far, I probably killes half of your good braincells left. Sorry. Go watch Broadcast TV now.

Resources to build stuff

2005-10-12T23:17:00.000-07:00

http://www.buildcoolstuff.com/

Funniest anim

2005-10-12T22:54:00.000-07:00

This is the kind of flash movie I like. They got the most important part: content. Then voice. Then anim. It looks mighty crappy but it is super offensive. Awesome!

http://www.thefrown.com/player.php?/thebadlife

...

2005-10-11T21:54:00.000-07:00

http://www.lifehack.org/

This is where I found this: 10 foods you should never eat.

Marketing 101

2005-10-11T21:17:00.000-07:00

We're surrounded by ads and commercials. It's easy to tune them out, but if you're like me, you can take pleasure at dissecting them and analyze them.

That makes it even more fun when you spot a really bad one.

Broadly, there are two general genres: the ones that make you indentify with the product user and the ones that make you laugh.

The idea is to make you remember the product (and not the commercial itself). That's fairly simple to follow. Show a mother using cleaning product when you target women who typically clean their home. See the flurry of Johnson and Johnson products commercials.

Makes you laugh too works. Geico. Capital one. Works.

Now for the really bad one. VW Passat. Take a look at it here. Checkpoint. It's the one called "Checkpoint". Basically it pictures a lone guy stuck at a checkpoint in an unnamed country that looks South American. The current militia inspecting the car get so intrigued by the not so common 120 features of the car that they tear it apart. And yes, the guy is white and the policieros are latin. They speak spanish. All those good stereotypes are in.

Bottom line: you could have bought a GM Grand Crapolo but no, you had to be a smart ass and get you this car for those people will just rip it apart and abandon you carless in the middle of nowhere. Buy a VW Passat = you're an idiot.

Useless facts of the day

2005-10-11T13:58:00.000-07:00

Salmonella does not come from salmon. Nope. Daniel Elmer Salmon discovered the salmonella bacteria and they named it after him. Now that's a cool thing to be remember for.

Starbucks (the coffee company) was named after first mate Starbuck (first mate is the rank, not the affiliation) on the Pequod (name of the ship) in the novel Moby Dick.
{More on this}

Carrying things around

2005-10-11T11:02:00.000-07:00

I'm used to carry tons of junk around. Mostly electronic devices. It probably feeds from personal insecurities. How mankind could survive so long without cellphones is beyond me. Anyway, I usually carry a cell phone, pda, thumb drive, mp3 player, keys, wallet, watch and probably more crap. The DIYer in me is impressed with the minimalistic approach of this toolkit. Fits in an altoids can. Maybe I'll start carrying one around too. I need a backpack though :)

http://www.escapemyhead.com/2005/10/tttk-travel-tinker-trouble-kit.html
From {Make}

One Liners

2005-10-09T20:09:00.000-07:00

Engadget fighter? Nah. Just funny though.
http://www.ohgizmo.com/

Greenspun is still talking.
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/

Blogs a mistakes. 7 most often made mistakes in the first 7 days.
http://blog.studentnyc.com/archives/26

Reality is better than fiction...

2005-10-09T13:55:00.000-07:00

It reads like a spy novel. It really sounds like one, but look closely at the url.

http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/vol47no3/article02.html

Good Security

2005-10-09T13:48:00.000-07:00

This is an amazingly insightful piece on dumb ideas about computer security.

http://www.ranum.com/security/computer_security/editorials/dumb/

Stuffed

2005-10-09T00:06:00.000-07:00

I have so many entries on Ruby and Ajax, I kinda feel I should actually use those. (i.e. move my ass and do instead of talk). I guess I'll start with Ruby, cuz really, I hate Javascript.

http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/

Ajax and Ruby

2005-10-08T20:27:00.000-07:00

Ajax here:

http://www.dojotoolkit.org/

Ruby:
http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/distributingrubyapplications/rails.html

Be sure you mean it!

2005-10-08T20:17:00.000-07:00

Little advice for you and your resume writing skills.

http://alanso.blogspirit.com/archive/2005/10/04/25-words-that-can-hurt-your-resume.html

Free everything

2005-10-08T19:26:00.000-07:00

Ii just looks like more and more people rebel against the tighter grips of copyright and intellectual property. Let it be free and copiable and distributable without constraint (or just the constraint that it remains free).

Opensource, free software, creative commons, open content. Wikipedia is a good exemple. Another good project is wikibooks at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page and yes, you guessed it, free books that anyone can edit and participate in.

Hamster wheel

2005-10-07T16:39:00.000-07:00

Now that's a pretty nice color wheel picker thingy.

http://www.ficml.org/jemimap/style/color/wheel.html

Set the fox on Fire(fox)

2005-10-07T16:01:00.000-07:00

I use Firefox on about 73 millions different computers (no, just about 4, really) and once in a while I realize I did not tweak such and suchsettings (or more annoyingly, I did not install some much needed extensions) So here are some values worthy of reminding myself for a good about:config tweak:

network.http.pipelining: true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests: some higer number (like 10)
nglayout.initialpaint.delay: 0 and I'm not quite sure I like this one.
image.animation_mode: none (does anyone need to see anim gifs anymore ever? No, I did not think so)

I too need FlashBlock and increasingly less useful NoScript extensions.

Color is Added!

2005-10-07T15:00:00.000-07:00

Now it is fair to claim that my little posting tool supports colors in a WYSISWG fashion. Now for wishing I got it right on the HTML side. If I could just add support for Blogger API, I could have a simple but effective blog editor. Cool!

More clean web!

2005-10-07T14:52:00.000-07:00

http://www.ajaxinfo.com/

And hopefully I will get my ass of the couch and actually do something w/it! (I mean with Ajax, not my ass...)

Torrents, this way

2005-10-07T14:50:00.000-07:00

Maybe I'll finally get to see the pilot of Invasion!

http://isohunt.com/stats.php?mode=btSites
http://www.bitenova.org/

Cheaper by the pound

2005-10-06T22:43:00.000-07:00

There is a whole bunch of random stuff. I may revisit some, but I'm just gonna do one post.

Pretty good photoblog. Nice compositon, sharp focus, good use of black and white. I like it overall pretty good.
http://myernore.blogspot.com/

One day I'll come to my senses and realize javascript is not totally evil. Wait, it is. Except for the once in a while useful Ajax app (really, Ajax is just a buzzword, it's just fancy javascript, just extra fancy) like google maps and the like.
Some article about Ajax: http://particletree.com/features/the-hows-and-whys-of-degradable-ajax/
A really cool javascript color scheme picker. Good for people like me who don't always make the best choices when it comes to pair colors together: http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html
A google maps based app that shows the outline of US zip codes. Awesome! http://maps.huge.info/?zip=97113
Ajax library: http://openrico.org/rico/home.page
Particularely good delicious Ajax app: http://sandbox.sourcelabs.com/livemarks/

Ruby sounds like a slightly quirky programming language. I already like it. http://www.rubyist.net/~slagell/ruby/index.html

I'll just rip this whole paragraph from that PC World article.

Sometimes the best e-mail and chat support in the world is no substitute for a conversation with a real person. But that kind of talk isn't cheap, so to cut costs, Net-based companies like Amazon often make their phone numbers hard to find. Not to worry: A site called Cliché Ideas has dug them up:

Amazon: 800/201-7575
EBay: 800/322-9266

Was looking for something like this. Lets you snoop on those http header. A life saver for debugging web apps, if you know what I mean. http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/index.html. Yes, it is for Firefox. If you're using IE, you probably don't know.

I'm not sure this intelligent bacon is worth it's share of pork. Too long to read it now, so here is the link. http://intelligentbacon.blogspot.com/2005/10/16-ways-to-drive-traffic-to-your-blog.html

$100 Laptop!

2005-10-06T09:13:00.000-07:00

Obviously this is cheap for a laptop. Unfortunately it is where most people stop when they are told about the project. The aim is to distribute the computer to children in developing countries as an enabler for communication. Children are not expected to shell out $100 per computer, those will be sold in bulk to governments and education branches. $100 is the target price to produce. They obviously like to make it as cheap as it comes. Reading the specs though, it's pretty beefy in features, and some are not found in standard laptop - hand crank power for example. But it also has a screen that can be used in bright sunlight (wow!), wi-fi and cellular support. On the software side, MIT media lab developped support for mesh networking to share internet connections, i.e. no need for extra hardware for a whole bunch of them to share one internet connection.

This is a great example of technology used in a selfless fashion. It is meant for developping countries, it is for children and it is for education.

http://laptop.media.mit.edu/faq.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=%24100+laptop

Cheap Flying

2005-10-05T22:16:00.000-07:00

Those people have cheap flying thing. Like a 50 bucks plane. With radio. Cool. (I know, it's not a real plane. It does not have 8 way controls, it does not have a kerosene turbojet... but it's cheap!)

http://www.horizonhobby.com

Foul smelling copy

2005-10-05T15:55:00.000-07:00

It looks like an extremely cheap Nintendo DS lookalike. And appears to be a real piece of shit. Enjoy the video!

(Warning: my firefox did not seem to like the video plugin thingy on the page and unfortunately crashed. I'm sure it's my installation though)
http://media.putfile.com/NeoDouble2

iRock

2005-10-05T15:31:00.000-07:00

This comment was too funny to pass. This is about the next great thing rumoured to come out of Apple.

Posted Oct 4, 2005, 4:29 PM ET by lupinstel
I heard that they are going to bring back the pet rock. Expect instead of some regular piece of basalt they are going to use rose quartz and turquoise, then they will put the letter "i" in front of the word rock, and everyone will buy them to be cool even though it is inferior and more expensive than other rocks. Thats just what I heard though. The information is possibly wrong.

The whole thread is here: http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000707061794/
The funny comment is in position 15.

Kicking myself!

2005-10-04T23:17:00.000-07:00

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designmistakes.html

The random list

2005-10-03T16:07:00.000-07:00

As we finally approach the end of the year (sure the last three month don't count) we once again have to cope with an usual paper wasting slew of best of whatever in 2005. PCWorld is ahead of the game: 3 days in September and they publish something from the July 2005 print named The 100 Best Products of 2005.

Wait.

July print? So it means this has actually been written in May. Now that's a hell of ahead of the game!

Hurray for PCWorld!

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,120763,pg,12,00.asp

Speeling is easier than you think

2005-10-03T15:04:00.000-07:00

Especially when someone else has already written the code for you. The spell checking code of course. This will go right in the blogger editor I'm writing. Awesome!

http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/NetSpell.asp

Remote Dvorak

2005-10-03T09:30:00.000-07:00

Hurray for Dvorak when he promotes work from home scheme! I like it! I would like it much better than my currentoffice environment (and I do not even have to work in a cubicle-hutch). His article is an eye opener for D.C.. Government should send Congress home to work from there. Lots of compelling arguments.

With the growth of networks and computer technology that has occurred over the past 25 years, I honestly don't even see much of a reason for centralized offices of any sort. I've worked from home/hotel/beach since 1981 without an interruption. It's quite doable, and you get more accomplished. And, yes, you can still have meetings and go to confabs where you can socialize if you have to. Most of the time spent in an office is wasted time, and people who promote it as "team building" and all the rest are nuts. Office work over time does not become team building; it becomes empire building and counterproductive. Government work is the same way.

The only issue would be keeping tabs on employees. Maybe they should wear ankle bracelets and have their homes stuffed with Internet enable security cams. Now what was my point again?

Pseudescopolicious

2005-10-03T08:55:00.000-07:00

Those used to be 60's era novelty. And I always wanted one. So one day I'll get off my ass and actually purchase those $10 worth of crafting parts and see for myself (and certainly give myself some nausea and a strong headache)

From here: http://pseudoscope.blogspot.com/
Of course I had to read it from Make: http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/10/how_to_make_a_pseudoscope.html

Scumbag galore

2005-10-02T13:24:00.000-07:00

This blog probably has an average of 0.4 reader per day, but I still get comment spam. They come in waves, there were 7 last night. Most don't even bother try be half smart. Still it's pretty painful. The most terrible one was this one:

I really love your blog!

I've bookmarked it and told my blogger freak friends about it. It's intelligent, sometimes funny and always refreshingly honest. Keep Up The Good Work!

For any of your readers who want to contribute to the Red Cross to aid the many families who have been devastated by Katrina, there is a link to the Red Cross here (link removed).

Ray

Brush my ego, guilt the reader then send them to the Red Cross. Well, the link was not to the red cross at all. Was to some refinance-now-mortgage-at-the-lowest-rate-shit.com scumbag site. The dumbest thing is that I'm pretty sure I'm the only one to read those comments, and yeah, this won't help your google rank one bit (see point #2 here) Now I'm tired of deleting 94% of all comments here, so I unfortunately had to turn on the type in the wavy words from this image here comment verification. The kind of things I hate to do myself, but hey, it'll make my life easier.

Ionic fart

2005-10-01T13:54:00.000-07:00

Remember the Ionic Breeze from Sharper Image? The overpriced air purifier, that not only has no moving parts, no fans, and probably does not move the air around, but was the center of a (really small) turmoil about the fact that not only it's not very good at purifying the air, but it also spews out a good amount of ozone in the air. Chemistry 101: ozone in the high athmosphere: good, in your lungs: bad.

Well, they came back. Same crappy product, still no moving part, but now with ozone guard. And it still $450 bucks. Still made from about $35 of parts. And you still have to suffer through their inane commercials.

At least the company can react to criticism and change their product accordingly. Not that I'll buy one now though...

Paper Beamer

2005-09-30T16:09:00.000-07:00

This is hilarious! Your cutout glueon Beamer just for you!

http://www.bmw.co.th/specials/downloads/your_dream_car.htm

Opensource Windows

2005-09-30T15:56:00.000-07:00

What?
Nothing.
It's Tom's hardware guide to Open Source dietary supplement for Windows. When the built in Windows version of an app sucks (MSPaint anyone?), there probably a good OpenSource or free replacement. I'll have to check one or two of those.

http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20050930/index.html

Darwin's theory of Apples?

2005-09-30T13:53:00.000-07:00

I've been told this is a good read.

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2005/09/27/what-is-darwin.html?CMP=OTC-13IV03560550

What you should do or avoid

2005-09-29T22:40:00.000-07:00

What you should do or avoid to get a good deal or ripped off when buying a car. My opinion is that you really should hang on to your car as long as you can. It is probably going to cost less than the payments on a new one. But what do I know?

http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2005/09/20/car-buying-mistakes/

Madness? What madness?

2005-09-28T18:33:00.000-07:00

In the shouldn't you just be using it? department, it appears that users of Apple iPod Nano (a named easily derided a iPod no no) are more concerned by the eagerness of their device to be scratched than the dire lack of feature of their music player. Just google it. Some actually go to great length to restore the lost shine of their (several) iPod devices. See here. I know, it is not a new phenomenon. It's just worse now as the iPod ownership turn closer into a mainstream religion, soon, everyone will forget that the device can actually be used to listen to music.

I don't have an iPod, I guess I'm kind of an outCast. But I do have an mp3 player. That also doubles as a voice recorder. And an FM radio. And can also record from the radio. Is mass storage device compliant. USB 2.0. Yeah, it's also smaller than a pack of gum, but it has a screen too. I don't really care for WMA support though, because it implies evil MS DRM. Good old mp3 will do. Ok, I admit, my player is all scratched too, but it still plays music, and you can't hear the scratches, I promise!

We need more of that kind of thinking

2005-09-28T15:52:00.000-07:00

This designer is putting some thought in the interface that control things. She does it with the elderly/handicaped in mind, but I think this can be brought to the people too. There is no reason not to want simple to understand, simple to use things. Blinking time on the VCR anyone?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4272516.stm
Via Make

Wow, this actually could work

2005-09-28T11:48:00.000-07:00

A long long long time ago, I started this dumb little posting tool that's just supposed to edit some text (with a rich text control) and hacked up rtf to html code of my own. The posting is just an email to the mail2blogger email.

I did not realize I was actually done, and I had never used it. It's not fancy by any means, but it gets the work done. My next step is gonna be to try it out on Mac and Linux with a recent version of mono.

Cogito ecto sum

2005-09-27T11:39:00.000-07:00

Or ergo. This post highlights my test of ecto, available at http://ecto.kung-foo.tv/. So far, I'm not sure I really like it. Sure I like the fact there is a Windows and Mac version. I'm not crazy about the idea of paying for both versions. There's no Linux version either and that's kind of a bummer. No WYSIWYG editor either, what is this, 1995? Frontpage 1.0? Maybe for my needs I should stick to an email client and the auto post interface of Blogger...

Icky details

2005-09-26T16:42:00.000-07:00

From the icky details of commercial profiling: how the recording industry shamelessly analyzes p2p download to slice and dice the market in ever smaller buckets. Bottom line: more of the same crap on the radio, pushed down your throats. Hurray. I don't listen to music on the radio, thanfully.

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/features/weekly/05-08-22-the-chumbawamba-factor.shtml

Now that sounds like a good idea!

2005-09-26T16:30:00.000-07:00

Been missing a good DVD ripper for Linux or Mac, so I can rip with my idle Linux box (and not crash my windows machine once in a while, crappy windows!) Hopefully it works better than Drip (And I don't mean Drip does not work well, I mean it is totally impossible to even install)

http://handbrake.m0k.org/index.php

Chef sara

2005-09-25T21:39:00.000-07:00

Cooking and politics.

http://chefsaraskitchen.blogspot.com/

How about this?

2005-09-24T12:51:00.000-07:00

I'll be talking to you, having a convincing conversation, but I'll be lying to your face. And you will know it. It will be obvious, yet, you won't get upset. I'll make claims that are doubtful, yet you will still want to believe me.

Does not sound like it could happen, right? Ok, I'll be talking to you but I'll have a little pin on my jacket that says: "What I am saying actually does not happen often."

Still not convinced? Try this as a tv commercial. The lose weight in your sleep kind. Unrealasitic claims and testimonial on how easy it is and how it works like magic. Unfortunately: results not typical. That's the little pin on the jacket.

Tired of H2

2005-09-22T23:59:00.000-07:00

Darn. Not a day without a stupid post on how hydrogen will save us all. That was on Autoblog. Here:

http://www.autoblog.com/entry/1234000920060001/

Apparently alot of investors have not taken physics 101. But I'll spare the audience a pedantic lecture about conservation of energy and entropy. But there is a simple somewhat accurate description:

Fuel cell create electricity by combining hydrogen (pure hydrogen) from a tank and oxygen from the air (plenty of it for free around us) and it form water. Good old H2O. Or summarized, like this:

Hydrogen + Oxygen => Water + Energy (electric energy here)

It turns out the this is reversible. To get hydrogen from water, just apply energym and miracle, you get Hydrogen and Oxygen (and not for free, you spent some electricity doing that)

Then it is pretty obvious that any scheme proposing to power a car by storing WATER in a tank will obviously NEED ANOTHER SOURCE OF ENERGY to get the hydrogen out of the water to be used. Whatever smoke screen of catalyst and faux scientifistic principle is presented. It's bad science.

It's like claiming you have an internal combustion engine that runs on exhaust fume. Well that's not possible.

There are zillions of chemical reaction that will lead to the production of hydrogen (chemistry 101, metal + acid => salt + hydrogen) but the energy comes from the chemical reaction. HYDROGEN HAS TO COME FROM SOMEWHERE.

Thank you for letting me rant. I've read so many inept comment about how Hydrogen I just had to vent a little.

Well, yeah, that was a totally pointless exercise. Vain attempt at education.

Portable Linux on my Thumbdrive.

2005-09-21T19:10:00.000-07:00

I'm a big fan of Make and an even better fan of their blog (helped by the fact that Philip Torrone maintains it). I recently got my attention grabbed by this post showing this one (furry goat, haha): transport your own Windows CE image and emulator along on your thumbdrive. Wherever you go, just pop in your thumbdrive and you see all your apps, bookmark and whatnot.

Only problem: it's Windows CE. Designed for PDAs and mobile devices, won't run anything but CE apps. Especially won't run Firefox. And also there is the (not even asked) question of licensing. I'm too lazy too dig, but I'm pretty sure Microsoft did not intend their emulator to be used in that fashion.

It's a cool idea though. So I just wanted to roll my own. From what I did, it seems even simpler than the Windows CE version.

Step 1: aquire software.

I mean, download software. You need:

- Qemu but in my case, I really wanted the Windows port. So I grabbed it from here: http://www.h6.dion.ne.jp/~kazuw/qemu-win/qemu-0.7.1-windows-1.zip
- Any distribution of linux you like. Obviously, I wanted something that would fit nicely on my USB drive (it's only 2GB). I picked DSL. Stands for Damn Small Linux.

Did I mention it was all done with free/opensource software?

Step 2: configure and install.

Unpack your QEMU somewhere. Use the qemu-img.exe command to create a file for the hard disk image. I successfully fit a DSL install in 150 MB. It's pretty tight though, I have only 10MB left after install. I named my file c.img.

You should also have the DSL iso handy. I suggest that you copy it in the qemu folder for convenience. Mine is named dsl-1.5.iso. You only need it there for installation. Open a command prompt and start the emulation with this:

qemu.exe -L . -m 192 -hda c.img -cdrom dsl-1.5.iso -boot d -enable-audio -localtime

See the qemu doc for the meaning of it. -m 192 is the amount of memory to use for the guest OS. Obviously should be adjusted according the the amount of physical memory you have.

If everything goes well, DSL should boot and you should be looking at some X desktop. Open an xterm there (as root, just spend a minute getting familiar with the shell. Right click on the desktop, that's pretty much all you need to know). You need to create a partition on you virtual hard disk. Use fdisk for that. If you don't know how what or why, google it. star fdisk like this:

fdisk /dev/hda

Then at the prompt, it's probably a similar series of command like this (from memory) n, p, 1, , , w. This should create a new primary partition named hda1, filling the entire space of the virtual disk.

Then run the dsl installer:

dsl-hdinstall

And follow the onscreen instructions. At the end of the installation, you should just close the emulated os. Relaunch qemu without the cd image.

qemu.exe -L . -m 192 -hda c.img -boot c -enable-audio -localtime

And then finish the install. With hat last command, I also created a batch file so I just double click to launch the emulation. You can also remove the dsl-1.5.iso as this time.

There you have it. A fully emulated OS. Portable. Litterally. Copy the qemu folder on your thumb drive and you are good to go.

Inspired/related links:

http://www.frontiernet.net/~beakmyn/pictureframe/ this is where I learned about DSL.
http://www.oszoo.org/download.html good help, eplanation, premade images for qemu
http://ashishpatil.blogspot.com/ where I learned about qemu. Originally, I tried to use bochs (http://bochs.sourceforge.net/) but the emulation is so slow that it is unusable.
http://m2.dad-answers.com/qemu-forum/ the qemu forums. Quite helpful to figure things out.
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/09/how_to_portable_ce_20.html the make post that gave me the idea to roll my own.
http://www.furrygoat.com/2005/09/portable_ce_20.html the one with Windows CE emulator. (furry goat!)

Here's screenshot with my install running:

NerdTV

2005-09-18T22:49:00.000-07:00

Not its own channel yet, but the name is appealing. Haven't seen it yet, yet it's the second episode out!
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/nerdtv/

We're just one ribbon away

2005-09-18T15:38:00.000-07:00

One ribbon short of winning the war on terrorism, bringing peace to Iraq or whatever. These people can help your addiction. Even make your own, so not only can you have a bigger SUV, bigger swimming pool and bigger ass than your neighbors, but you can also have even more meaningless ribbons.

http://supportourribbons.com/index.php

You're all a bunch of Slaxer

2005-09-18T00:51:00.000-07:00

Live distribution of Linux are a dime a dozen, but this one has a sleek website :) and also it uses the union FS, making readonly filesystem look writeable, with a copy on write scheme, keeping the changes in memory.

http://slax.linux-live.org/

3d for everyone.

2005-09-18T00:32:00.000-07:00

Just interesting how on TV (TV!) the show proposes that you hack your way to a device that definitely was not purposed to be used in that fashion. Bet the CVS people aren't exactly happy about this.
http://www.g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/features/52286/Modding_the_CVS_Camera_.html

I built it, it does not mean I like it.

2005-09-16T15:32:00.000-07:00

Kinda like those Albertson's employee, when asked where insert name of whatever product you never find in the store is hiding and say I can try to help you, but I don't actually shop here, Scott Berkun switched to Firefox. He did shop at Albertson's for a long time though.

Read from : [http://www.downloadsquad.com/2005/09/14/scott-berkun-goes-firefox/]
His post: [http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/?p=115]

Double Combo

2005-09-15T18:33:00.000-07:00

Good combo of two good things: cameras and hardware hack!

http://www.camerahacker.com/Hacks.html

RSS Flickr

2005-09-14T11:10:00.000-07:00

Now that's a cool use of RSS/Javascript and all those kind of junk. flickr is cool.

http://www.slower.net/slowerlog/2005/09/flickr-rss-widget.php

RAD for WEB

2005-09-14T11:07:00.000-07:00

Ruby is probably a weird language. Still, I'll take a look at this.
http://www.rubyonrails.org/
http://www.railsplayground.com/

"Idle Tofu"

2005-09-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

I spent too much time reading band names generated here:
http://www.bandnamemaker.com/

Tricky Oasis and the Checkered Witch
Sponsored Disgrace of the Backup Fissure
Barbie of the Smell Papaya
Machine Virgin

Too much time I'm telling you.

Random Find

2005-09-13T18:16:00.000-07:00

http://tlug.dnho.net/?q=node/146

For good reference

2005-09-13T01:31:00.000-07:00

I just spend 3 hours trying to find this. Well, I just could have used my memory...

youremblem.com

At least now I know I put it there. For your car. A custom sign. Your emblem...

Somebody told me this was good

2005-09-12T23:47:00.000-07:00

So I guess this is to be believed. I'll check it out sometimes. I don't have my hopes up though because usually forums are trolled by fly-by novices who always ask the same variation of the same question without caring to search. We'll see.

http://forums.howwhatwhy.com/ubbthreads.php