Last weekend, I was just zapping around TV channels when all of a sudden I came by the opening credits of a movie. Now this happens often of course, but this caught my attention: The opening credits were surrounded by HTML tags! It happened to be the opening credits to Antitrust, which ended up being quite a good hacker-like movie. They actually used linux commandline stuff, though using a command like ‘hideall’ which would then actually hide the files from viewing by others is maybe not too realistic, but it worked well enough in the movie of course. (There are more examples of stuff like this, such as being able to connect to sattelites just by typing in their ip number 😉 ) Yes, this was actually quite an enjoyable movie. From the comments over at imdb I gather that the trailers were quite different, and that the DVD of this movie might actually contain some very nice other material as well. The DVD is available already, so I might just want to get that some time in the (near) future.
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For a while, I’ve been looking at several implementations of Wiki software. MediaWiki is nice, but very heavy on the server. Not weird, considering the software is loaded with features. Of course, a lot of those features are hardly needed, so I chose to stay away from MediaWiki. After trying various other Wiki implementations, I came by WikkaWiki. It has all the usual features of a wiki, but isn’t too loaded with features that I don’t need. I just need some wiki functionality. Looking at the code, it was quite easy to customize. And fully XHTML and CSS-based, which is also a big plus. And so I now have a fully functional wiki for my Electronic Music World website. I also immediately made a slight change to the code.The one thing I did not like was the fact that when you linked to another page within the wiki, the link text would be the tag of the page. Linking to MyWikiPage would mean the link text would be ‘MyWikiPage’, and not the page title of that page, which could be ‘My Wiki Page’. And so I made a contribution to WikkaWiki. It’s two simple changes to existing Wikka methods. It works like a charm now, so I’m a happy man 🙂 Now… to find the time to actually fill the wiki with useful information 😉
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Gideon Marken is a very cool guy. He is the person behind the fabulous ArtistServer, and a very experienced web developer. It was Gideon who made a weblog post yesterday that found me intrigued. This was a way to look at Open Source that I’d never before seen.
Those little 4-6yr old minds are always hearing about ‘sharing,’ ‘waiting in line,’ ‘being polite,’ or being given a means to explore the world and create. If we look at those concepts – we see a foundation for Open Source. – there’s the sharing – the acknowledgement of others – the consideration of many over one – the support and encouragement of creating
Doesn’t he have a very valid point there? Somehow, when we turn into adults we seem to forget about these things we were taught in Kindergarten about sharing, respecting each other, working together. We become self-centered people only caring about our own career (well, with we I speak generally, there are also people who don’t forget about that 😉 ) Gideon predicts that people can fight Open Source, but they’ll lose. Sooner or later, Open Source will prevail. I surely hope so, though I’m not as convinced as Gideon. We still live in a capital-centered world. Everything evolves around money, where Open Source doesn’t. I surely hope Gideon is right and will do my best to support the cause. -
I’m currently working with extending an existing application, so I’m working with a database someone else designed. Not a problem usually, except for the fact that this person chose to use the TIMESTAMP fieldtype, which I usually don’t use. Now, when I think of a timestamp, I automatically think of a Unix Timestamp, which is the number of seconds since 01/01/1970. This is what most apps use. Not MySQL, as I found out. While trying to format the timestamp with the php date function, I got some weird data, so I checked the MySQL documentation. Turns out that for some reason beyond my understanding, MySQL does not use Unix Timestamps, but instead uses a string similar to the Datetime field, but without the special characters. So, for instance, august 1st 2005, 12:00 would be: 20050801120000. I just can’t find any reason for MySQL doing this, but they did it. Of course, after I found this out, I am now formatting the timestamp field differently 😉
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Being involved in some forum software myself, I’m always interested in reading what people have to say about related topics. Venturus published an article on how to build a popular forum community, which contains some useful tips. I don’t agree with everything said, but there are definately some valid points in this article. Basically, I agree with points 1, 2, 4 and 5, and just disagree with point 3. I don’t like lying. Anyway, worth checking out.
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According to this article on BBC, people who get the most of their music through file sharing, are also the biggest spenders when it comes to buying legal music online. This basically means that the music industry is starting to sue their best clients. In what kind of world are we living then? Again, I will reiterate the fact that I’d love to buy my music through legal online music stores if only these stores were available to me (a linux user). Of course, there is Bleep and eMusic, but these don’t give me the occasional top 40 tune that I like. Time for the music industry to change the way they handle digital music and file sharing, maybe?
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After BookCrossing, now there is PostCrossing. A nice way to receive a random postcard from all over the world every once in a while. Pretty fun, if you ask me. It doesn’t cost much (I mean, how much does it cost to send a postcard? Not a lot eh?) and it brings some fun when you receive a postcard.
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It’s all over the Internet by now. More explosions in the London tube. I was not planning on giving it any attention, until coming by this Flickr picture. The picture itself isn’t what caught my attention, but the text with the picture is definately worth a mention. I think it gives a good insight on the feelings of everyone.
At last weeks vigil one of the speakers (don’t know who) read a poem he wrote and from that my favourite quote was ‘Defiance a four letter word spelled with the middle finger’ For the last two weeks Londoners have basically been giving the terrorists the finger -” F’U we ain’t scared and we are not intimidated…” It felt like today they gave us the finger back… and I am not impressed.
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It seems Scotty got beamed up himself. James Doohan, Scotty in Star Trek, passed away. Now the real beaming can begin…
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Now this is something I’d like to have. What a beautiful keyboard! And useful as well, being able to map the keys and not even that, also to map whatever the key says! Very cool! I’m sure it’s going to be expensive, but if it’s not *too* expensive I might actually get one.