Wordle tag cloud for my blog. Nifty

If you live in the UK and looking to pick a new broadband provider, have a look at the performance monitoring report by the broadband information site samknows.com . The report is based on data gathered by routers attached to volunteers’ connections. My provider Be Unlimited does fairly well and is in the top 3 in terms of performance. They do have a problem with a slow DNS server, which I solved a while back by switching to OpenDNS. Overall, for £18 a month, no contract plus a static IP, its well worth the money. If you are a bandwidth hog like me its a good deal. They advertise 24Mbps, but in reality the average is around 15 – 18 Mbps. I consistently get 17 Mbps, which is pretty good.

The straight line distance to the exchange from my place is around 500m, but according to BT the actual cable length is around 2Km. This and the old wiring at my place is probably why I’m not getting anything close to 24. I’ve been able to get 7Mbps, by connecting the router directly to the BT  master socket .

Click image to view large version

http://www.amazon.com/Uranium-Ore/dp/B000796XXM/ref=dp_return_2?ie=UTF8&n=172282&s=electronics

Read the reviews, seriously :)

I'm on the ground floor, but we still had to evacuate when one of the windows burst. This section is all Macs though :)

My programmer personality type is:

DHSC

You're a Doer.
You are very quick at getting tasks done. You believe the outcome is the most important part of a task and the faster you can reach that outcome the better. After all, time is money.

You like coding at a High level.
The world is made up of objects and components, you should create your programs in the same way.

You work best in a Solo situation.
The best way to program is by yourself. There's no communication problems, you know every part of the code allowing you to write the best programs possible.

You are a Conservative programmer.
The less code you write, the less chance there is of it containing a bug. You write short and to the point code that gets the job done efficiently.

Ordered a new laptop over the weekend, current laptop is getting rather old (almost 3 years). Waiting for it to be delivered tomorrow.

Specs :

Toshiba P200-156

• Intel Centrino Core 2 Duo (T7200 ) 2. GHz 4MB cache.
• 2 GB RAM and 250 GB hdd
• 17.1 inch screen
• Nvidia GeForce Go 7600 with 256MB ram.
• DVD+- RW etc..
• builtin web cam, bluetooth

http://www.transmogrifier.org/ch/comics/list.cgi

My Vista installation has to wait a while longer. Toshiba does not support Vista on the Satellite M30 and considers it an out of date model ( ??? ). Though the hardware is perfectly capable of running Vista with Aero glass. NVidia doesn't have Vista drivers for the GeForce Go 5X series GPUs. There are hacky ways of getting this to work, but these are not stable so far from what I've read.

However, I'm in the mood to buy a new laptop. I'm looking at the Toshiba P100 series of laptops, as they have a decent mix of features i.e good graphics Nvidia geforce 7600 with at least 128 MB of video ram, IGB of memory and a 100gb hard drive. My budget for all this is about £1000. I play games on my laptop and it serves as my main entertainment center therefore it should have a  decent graphics card. Should be able to run secondlife and need for speed :). I've narrowed down my requirements and now just need to hunt around the shops more till I get it for as cheap as possible. It's cheaper to buy a laptop with 1 GB of RAM and upgrade it later. Crucial is selling 2 GB kits for less than £100. The price difference between a 1GB laptop and a 2GB model is close to £250.

I bought a Picooz on impulse a few weeks ago. I saw it on display and it was only £30 and it gave me a "What the heck, its only 30 quid" moment. Turns out that I've bought the world's smallest RC helicopter, weight about 10 grams. Though it is small, it does have a lot pf power in it. The copter charges from the RC controller and takes about 20 minutes to charge for a 5 minute flight.

It's hard to control it at first, though I'm getting the hang of it. It's a very forgiving toy and handles all the bumps and crashes very well. Indestructible so far :). Getting the Picooz to fly forward took a bit of hacking it. It has a tendency to fly in circles and get into an un-controllable spin. This happens even after trimming. I added a nose extension, which looks like an antenna to add a bit more weight to the front so it can fly forward slowly.

http://www.moo.com/

Had mine delivered on Monday and they are pretty cool :) Mini calling cards just the size of a chewing gum. Each card can have a unique photo, in matt print. The printing is high quality.

10 cards free for Flickr Pro users.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hibri/sets/72157594211201138/

Added these blogs to my feed list.

http://blogs.msdn.com/tess

http://dotnetdebug.blogspot.com/

Tess's blog is full of  debugging and trouble-shooting tips.

http://blogs.msdn.com/tess/archive/2006/02/23/537681.aspx

Hilarious :) makes me laugh every time I watch it.

This is a game selling at MenKind, in the Wandsworth Southside Mall.

This should apply for the K750i as well. The w800i phone has a built-in POP email client. GMail uses SSL for both POP and SMTP e-mail transfers.  The w800i has support for SSL/TLS in its mail client.

However, the phone does not come with two root certificates required to get Gmail to work. Gmail uses two different certificates on pop.gmail.com and smtp.gmail.com, and each of these certificates are issued by two certification authorities. The trick to get gmail to work is simply install the root certificates of these two CAs. These are Thawte and Equifax.

To get the root certificates, open the Certificates manager in Windows XP or 2000 ( open a blank Microsoft Management Console , by typing mmc at the command prompt, and then add the Certificates snap-in). In the certificates tree, under Trusted Root Certification Authorities , find the certificate for Equifax Secure Certification Authority and Thawte Premium Server CA.

Now, export each of these certificates in turn as a DER encoded binary X.509 certificate. Send these two files via a bluetooth or infrared link (does not work when the files are copied using file manager ). The phone will prompt to accept the certificates and you are good to go :).

Gmail also has a mobile interface at http://m.gmail.com, but this is not good enough to compose emails.

and removing it kills Windows.

From the Register,

"Sysinternals' Mark Russinovich has performed an analysis of the copy restriction measures deployed by Sony Music on its latest CDs: which he bluntly calls it a 'root kit'. Using conventional tools to remove Sony's digital media malware will leave ordinary users with a dead Windows systems.

While the Sony CDs play fine on Red Book audio devices such as standard consumer electronics CD players, when they're played on a Windows PC the software forces playback through a bundled media player, and restricts how many digital copies can be made from Windows."

Avoid Sony CDs.. if you can.. scary stuff.

nothing to write about. not much happening. I'm graduating with an MSc in IT Consulting in December, just got my results confirming it. It has been a hard year, and I'm relieved that its all over now. I'll be going back to work soon. More details on that later.

VS 2005 is out. Get your hands on it. If you are looking for free copies (like me) MS is giving them away at their launch events. I'm attending the 15th of November event at the Novotel in London.  I'm skipping the ASP .Net sessions on the 14th because I know quite a bit about that already. I'm more interested in the Biztalk, SQL server 2005  and Team suite sessions.

Eid Mubarak to all of you ...

Roaming around Google Earth, I found these yellow rectangles. Turns out these are National Geographic markers. Each marker points to an article in the National Geographic Magazine online edition. Neat eh ? :)

Opera for free, and yes no ads.. but only till the party lasts

get your registration code  http://my.opera.com/community/party/

well, now this is neat...

http://en.crystalxp.net/bricopack-vista-inspirat.php

This shell pack gives my XP Pro a Vista inspired look and feel. Now the nicest thing about this theme is that it modifies all the system dlls and changeshack.e all the icons and other resources inside. I spotted a process called "Reshack.exe" running while i was installing this. It's not heavy scince it is not anything additional. It could do with some more work, the icon edges are jagged in places.

However, I do like the way it redcued the size of my task bar. The black slim task bar is really nice, and saves more screen space. The whole thing can be uninstalled safely...

http://www.konfabulator.com/

All I can say is download and check it out, pretty cool addes those cool things to your destop till Longhorn (eh Vista) is released.

Two days to move house. Never knew how much stuff we had till we had to move. Anyways its all done, and I'm dead tired. It will be a few days till I get broadband over here. I'm cancelling my existing Tiscali service and moving to UKOnline hopefully :).

Should I be wary of Thursdays ?  

Was trying to go to a friend's place in Wood Green (North East London). Went to Victoria station to get the Vicroria Line, only to be told it was shutdown upto Warren Street, we then went back to Embankment to try to get there using the Northern Line, just as we got off the train, the station was evacuated. So we go out, and try to figure out what bus to take. We then walked to Trafalgar Square and had  a calm lunch while the police were running around with sirens blaring. At last got a bus to take me to Hammersmith and then home. Started at 12 and its taken 5 hours to get home and I'm dead tired from all the walking.

Got a few games from over here

http://www.volny.cz/k700hry/
http://www.volny.cz/k700hry2/
http://www.volny.cz/k700hry3/

and  http://maestro.intramail.ru/files/java/index.php?name=T

An article by Robert Adler in the newscientist says that the rate of technology innovation is decreasing. In the US the period between 1847-1915 was the most innovative period, with the rate of innovation peaking in 1915.

My analogy on this is ; Innovation is like digging for treasure. Humans have found the easy to find treasure (electricity, nukes, Internet etc.. ).. and now we have to dig harder to find the rest. The problem is we are not digging as hard as we did....

http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blmichaeljacksonjokes.htm

and on Iraq and WMDs

http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/bliraqwmdjokes.htm

http://www.worth1000.com/cache/contest/contestcache.asp?contest_id=6091&display=photoshop#entries

Magic with Photoshop .. Starwars is the victim.

I can't figure out why many people hate JarJar Binks so much. I like the charachter, much funnier than C3PO.

Ok, I'm back.

Haven't posted because I was swamped with coursework. One more semester to go and I'm done.

And now i'm catching up with Seasons 1,2 and 3 of Alias. I've seen only Season 4 and that ended in a cliffhanger last week. Vaughn tells Syd that he is not who he says he is and his name is not really Vaughn, and then their car gets slammed by another (and they are about to get married). Why tell secrets in a moving car ? !!!!!.......

I got the DVDs for the older series and I'm busy watching them :)

Next week I'm off to the Microsoft .Net roadshow. I'm looking forward to the SQL server sessions and any goodies.

On a serious note, I'm looking for a client to do my Masters degree final project with. The project should include an IT strategy for the client, plus development of an application.

http://www.uwtv.org/programs/displayevent.asp?rid=2459

a very interesting presentation about what goes on behind your google search. Jeff Dean of Google gives a description of the Google File System (GFS) , how to build reliable systems on unreliable hardware, how are the indexes built ? and what happens during a search.

The latest shiny thing from Google. Just when you thought their search engine was good.

http://www.google.co.uk/googlegulp/

An Australian school bans the iPod, on the grounds that it encourages isolation and turns people into social outcasts.

"A private school in Australia has banned its pupils from listening to their iPods. The yuppie consumer gadget will not be permitted in class, because it encourages kids to be selfish and lonely, according to the school principal."

I have to agree with this though. We are increasingly shutting out our environment with all sorts of electronics and withdrawing into an electronic shield.

However, on the lighter side should iPods carry health warnings ?

Here is an interesting book from O'reilly

Mind Hacks

"This exploration into the moment-by-moment works of the brain uses cognitive neuroscience to present experiments, tricks, and tips related to vision, motor skills, attention, cognition, subliminal perception. Each "hack" examines specific operations of the brain. By seeing how the brain responds, you'll learn more about how the brain is put together. If you want to find out what's going on in your head, then Mind Hacks is the key."

There are sample mind hacks http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mindhks/.