Somebody took the audio from a Microsoft Vista “we’re so brilliant, we’ve invented all this new stuff” shill session and overlaid it on a video of themselves doing it all on their OS/X desktop.
Pretty amusing stuff. The best part is that I can do most of it on my Linux box as well.
Check it out at: Here
Thanks to Ben Okopnik for the link.
– Suramya
What do you do when you find someone else stealing bandwidth from your wireless network and you don’t like it? You Lock it down correct? This person didn’t do that, he decided to have a little fun at the expense of the unauthorized user…
So he ran squid with a trivial redirector that downloads images, uses mogrify to turn them upside down and serves them out of it’s local webserver. So the visitor gets websites that look something like:
Check out Upside-Down-Ternet for rest of the crazy things he did.
– Suramya
This cool DIY (Do It Yourself) project teaches you how to make your own sextant to experiment with celestial navigation using the following items:
As you can see you only need some commonly available items and the instructions don’t look that hard to follow. Might try making this one of these days…
Check it out: Here
Update (4th Aug 2006):
Since a couple of people got confused and this post was an OHT (Over Head Transmission) for someone here are a couple of links with more info on Sextants:
* Define Sextants
* Wikipedia entry of Sextant
* The Sextant
* How to use a Sexton
– Suramya
Now this is a cool software. It allows a user to encrypt all communications using end-to-end encryption and routing based on Tor (Tor Overview)
The program is a ‘friendly’ fork of the Gaim project. In case you are wondering what a fork is, a project fork or branch happens when a developer (or a group of them) takes a copy of source code from one software package and starts to independently develop a new package.
The software itself is pretty cool, but its likely to come under heavy fire from various govt and ‘spy’ agencies because the design of the software makes it really hard for anyone to eavesdrop on anyone. They will claim that this will allow terrorists and child pornographers to communicate anonymously.
It might be used by a terrorist but then so can a car (used as a getaway vehicle), a cell phone (used as a communication tool), watch (to sync timed attacks)… does this mean all of them should be banned as well? Any technology developed can be used for good as well as bad purposes.. starting with fire all the way upto a nuclear reaction… now that the genie is out of the bottle you can’t stuff it back in.
I think it will be useful for all sorts of people including:
Spies, to let them communicate with the home office, report anonymously
Corporate whistle blowers: they can report wrongs/broken laws without getting into trouble
People behind the great firewall of china, where you can be arrested for disagreeing with the government.
Check out the software: ScatterChat
Thanks to Schneier on Security for the link.
– Suramya
PS: I haven’t tried the software yet so don’t know how stable it is. Though I will be installing it shortly so will let you know how it goes.
This is really cool stuff. It lets you use AJAX (asynchronous javascript and xml) without cluttering your HTML code with javascript tags. So essentially you are separating javascript and html making it easier to maintain code. The best part is that the process looks really simple to use. I am thinking of trying it out for a couple of test pages and see how it works.
Check out Behaviour’s Extended Demo page to see an example of what all you can do with it.
The main problem I have with 100% javascript controlled pages is that if the visitor has JavaScript turned off all your flashy jazz is of no use to him. Plus with all the new hacks/exploits that are coming out that use javascript more and more people are browsing the net with it disabled… So no I won’t be converting suramya.com or my photogallery to something javascript driven or flash driven anytime in the near future.
Check it out: Behaviour : Using CSS selectors to apply Javascript behaviours
– Suramya
I don’t have anything against Microsoft. Their software has its uses and while I do use Linux on my primary system and on all the servers I run/manage I also have windows XP on one of my systems and on my laptop and am happy with it as It doesn’t crash as often as earlier versions of windows and mostly does what I want it to do. Now that being said, lets move on to the topic of my rant.
I was updating windows using the Windows update tool and I got the following message:
“To use microsoft update, you must first install the latest version of some Windows components. This will allow your computer to work with these new features on the site:”
(Emphasis mine)
Could they have made the message any more vague? Can you figure out what it wants to update? I couldn’t and guess what this latest version of some Windows component was? What, No idea? It was Windows Genuine Advantage(WGA) verification tool. Now my question is, why couldn’t they just say that you need to install WGA verification tool before you download updates? Why did they have to be so vague?
You know what the best part is? WGA is not a default part of windows, its a new software that MS is pushing out to detect pirated copies of windows, so doesn’t this make their message about it being the latest version of a windows component false and misleading?
Below is a screen shot I took of this interesting message and what was actually installed:
I have the same issue with other portions of MS update. They almost never tell what a particular update is for, I know they give the Knowledge Base number, but why can’t they tell you right over there exactly what issue a particular update fixes? Having that info over there would help me/other users decide if a particular patch needs to be installed immediately or can be installed later in a regularly scheduled update cycle.
Well this is all from my side.
– Suramya
Geekiest. Maize Maze, Ever.
Star Trek fan Tom Pearcy has planted 1.5 million maize plants to cut the maze, which features images of Mr Spock, the USS Enterprise and what looks like Captain Jean-Luc Picard and a Borg cube.
Check it out at: Maize: the final frontier
Thanks to Sarcasmo’s Corner for the link.
– Suramya
This is a really cool flash application that allows you to create Visio like diagrams using flash. I tried it out and found the system to be pretty responsive. It allows you to share the documents you create for collaborative editing and if you like what you have you can export it as image files (jpg, png) or as SVG files that can be imported into Visio.
I like the idea and will probably use it for personal stuff, however I don’t think I would use it if I ever had to design some sensitive/confidential system layout. I searched for a privacy policy but couldn’t find any so don’t know what level of privacy are they offering. Without a privacy policy they can do whatever they want with your data.. Not saying that they will, just that they can.
Check it out: Gliffy.com – Diagram and draw in your web browser
Thanks to Adam Fields (weblog) for the link.
– Suramya
As some of you probably know I love taking photos but I have always had trouble capturing fireworks, they just don’t come out nicely for me 🙁
The following article’s have some awesome tips on how to photograph fireworks so now that I know the secret you can expect some nice pics of fireworks on my site in the near future 🙂
For Digital Cameras: New York Institute of Photography – Tips on Fireworks Digital Photography
For Regular Cameras: How to Photograph Fireworks
Thanks,
Suramya
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