Archive for category tech
Everyone who uses Firefox regularly has a core of extensions that they have grown to use so much as to make them necessary to browsing. One of the most tedious parts of browsing and then posting material is the saving and organizing of large amounts of pictures. I fully use 4 extensions every day for this task, and have several others that I use at least weekly.
One of the most useful of these extensions was Bazzacuda Image Saver. I loved this app because it could detect images in tabs, save them to a predefined folder, and close those tabs, all in one step. Plus it has the separate ability to find the largest image on a page opened in the current tab, and will save that image and close the tab.
Upgrading to new Firefox versions takes a little bit of finding, updating, and re-installing of extensions. For the most part, everything works at least the same as before, but with each new version, we all lose a few extensions that were orphaned by their developers. I lost Bazzacuda when I upgraded to Firefox 3.0. The extension would work every so often, but for the most part gave a very generic error and did nothing. I tried to find other extensions to replace it, hoping that eventually the developer would fix the extension. I was let down on both counts. No other extension (or combination thereof) would replace it, and the developer website is now redirected to something completely unrelated. Despite many comments asking for updates, the developer has been silent on the Mozilla Addons page.
So, a few days ago, I set out to see if it would be a simple change to fix it. I had already overriden the version number to allow it to install, and unpacked the code to take a look. Unfortunately it wasn’t something simple to find, but I eventually found it and fixed the problem and the little cascade of other problems it caused.
So, since it wasn’t something superficial, I am releasing the modified code. I changed the name to be generic, just in case the original developer decides to release more versions of his own program. This updated for Firefox version 3.0.2 extension is called simply Image Saver. Both the original extension and my updated version are under MPL/GPL licensing, so it should be no problem.
I also wish to add-on functionality in the future, such as more folders and more hotkeys. So renaming it now seemed best.
Download it from the Image Saver Project Page.
update 10/9/08: If you are one of the people that downloaded this yesterday, please redownload it and install again. A bug not allowing the default folder location to be saved has been fixed. Eventually I’ll put automatic updates in.
Terminator iPhone meta-game
Sep 26
The hype team behind Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles has released a multi-platform metagame, named Terminator Ambush.
Play consists of two levels. On one hand you are the hunted. Use an iPhone to check in using your GPS location via their Ambush iPhone application. Which looks like this:
You get points for putting in more location, but then the other portion of the game comes into play. On the Terminator Ambush website, you are tracked by your check-ins on a non-descript virtual map. Hunters can use this data to try and determine your next check-in point and lay a trap. If they get you, you are terminated.
I’m not sure if it’s entirely working, as I used the iPhone app while running around town today. It shows my plots but my score has not been updated at all. The plot points were much shorter distance apart on the virtual map than I had thought, that with the large trap reticle, it should be easy to terminate people. What I mean is, I went in 10 mile sweep through Austin while running errands, and my path markings are just about contained in a one-inch square area.
Yes, it’s a little big-brothery that you are uploading your GPS data, but luckily it doesn’t show any real-world tie-in for people to actually track you or anything. But, meta-gaming like this is a fun idea, that I expect will become even more popular now, with all the iPhones and other GPS phones being released. There was a another game announced previously called Parallel Kingdom which has a more involved concept of building virtual buildings and such as a sort of GPS MMO.
Big Dog new video leaked
Sep 22
Testing Polls: iPhone 2.1
Sep 13
In fact, I am posting from it now.
I was skeptical, and I wasn’t alone in that feeling, but I only had one day to be skeptical because they only announced this thing yesterday! (Kudos for keeping it under wraps).
Google Chrome is a web browser built on WebKit, which powers other well known browsers such as Apple’s safari and KDE’s Konqueror. Google included a cute online comic book to explain the technology here. The gist being that the web browser uses entirely separate processes to load each separate tab. This goes beyond simple multi-threading, and gets into OS territory. They want to do this to eliminate browser hangups from ultiple tasks needing to use the same process. While this can and will usitilize more memory and processor power, it also allows one to regulate it easier, especially memory-wise. Plug-ins (when they appear) will also use separate processes.
The comic gets into computer science territory when they explain how they built their V8 from Webkit. It streamlines object manipulization and pointer calls and other things you can read about there.
I’m impressed. First off at the ease of slipping into it right from Firefox. It handles the same keyboard commands I’m used to, and tabs behave much the same. Two things it does not have that firefox has:
- Memory munching. Yes, it uses a spearate process and memory space for each tab, but these are confined spaces, unlike Firefox which could eat all my memory if I let it.
- Addons. none. Zilch. Yeah, it’s a beta, but man I need my add-ons.
The lack of add-ons will make me only piddle with Chrome when I feel like, not use it for a main browser. For one, I have many that are hard to live without. And two, Firefox is damn snappy without any add-ons, too, so it’s unfair to compare Chrome until it’s got the same capablities as a fully-loaded Firefox browser.
But the technology is impressive, and obviously since everything is open source, we are going to have a flood of add-ons coming very soon.
While they extremely oversimplify the assets of parallel computing, and discounting the fact that even low-cost CPU’s do plenty of parallel computing nowadays with multi-core systems, there can be no mistake of the sheer awesomeness of 1100 paintball guns firing at once.
And so I give you Adam and Jamie of the Mythbusters in their painting class 101 (filmed at Nvidia’s Nvision show):
Well, the wife and I got iPhone 3G’s today. But they really should be called iPhone 2.5G’s.
After Wired’s article about the survey they did of 3G users in various locales across North America, I was ready to discount the iPhone 3G’s troubles with the 3G network as mainly due to faulty local networks.
Then again, something didn’t sit right in that conclusion. It all became crystal clear as the young, stoked Apple attendant was ringing up the phones. We talked a bit about the Wired article, and I told him I was confident about the iPhone being ok here in Austin, because of the article and my current phone. I have had a Samsung Sync SGH-A707 for almost 2 years now, and the one problem I have never had with it is bad reception. I have 5 to 7 bars (which is max on the phone) on 3G almost the entire time I am in town.
Then he said, “look at it now”. I did and it showed 5 bars of 3G on the Samsung. It never wavered while my wife was getting her iPhone setup. Then as my iPhone was setup, I saw that it has only one bar of 3G for a brief moment and then switches to 3 to 5 bars of Edge. That was enough test for me. The Apple store employee says they never get 3G at that store or around it on the iPhones.
I sit here now, in South Austin (the store was in North Austin) with the new iPhone showing 5 bars of Edge, reading this rebuttal to a rebuttal of the Wired article… essentially saying it is ‘mostly’ still the network.
It’s not the network.
I remember that the Samsung Sync is known for its exceptionally high radio strength. But Wired’s survey chart certainly shows Austin as solid green for network stability/strength. And yet the phones we just purchased have a very hard time connecting anywhere in town with more than a couple bars, and drop to Edge a majority of the time. It was a good theory, and I appreciate the survey, but unfortunately it isn’t backed up in reality.
Photosynth
Aug 26
An eon in modern time ago (a year) I posted a small extrinsic blurb about the upcoming Microsoft technology dubbed Photosynth. I thought the link explained and showed it better than I could, so no need for a further post. But now it is released, and now it deserves the shoutout.
This is a simple “synth”. It was taken by some guy in Austin on his cameraphone. He took a few shots of the 360 bridge (a pretty noticeable landmark), just across the river from where I used to work at Origin. I think this shows the power of Photosynth. First of all, this was easy to find, I just did a Photosynth search for Austin, and it was the first choice. Second this was only a few short photos in a cameraphone. This isn’t the Taj Mahal demo with 400 shots with a $5000 DSLR camera. No, this is normal guy with possibly time on his break from work to snap a few shots through a window and upload them. You can still zoom in on them and skirt all around his view.. and it captures his view amazingly well.
That’s all I have to say, except one more thing, kudos to Microsoft to allowing embed code. Normally that wouldn’t get kudos, because every website on earth has some free embedable content on it nowadays, but kudos for finally coming around. (but an iframe? seriously?)
Laser Pizza Cutter
Aug 21
old.
I still get that twinge of jealousy with all his equipment that would have cost a pretty penny back then. Not to mention his parents never seem to care about him wardialing thousands of calls on their line. My parents freaked out everytime a computer would dial me. But how else would I join those wionderful BBSes and get my TradeWars on?
WarGames: A Look Back at the Film That Turned Geeks and Phreaks Into Stars
As the title says, not much more to say. This is a huge update with thousands of changes across the board, both on the frontend and backend… so pretty much a brand new browser. I’ve tested a few of the builds, but a couple of my extensions wouldn’t work with 3 (yet), so I haven’t used it for my main browsing. But I love the auto-bookmark search addition, which was my favorite feature of the Flock browser. Plus it seems alot more snappy, and less memory hogging than Firefox 2.
Mozilla is trying to get a world record for most downloads in a day off the thing. See more at SpreadFirefox.
And I do mean old. I will say that I had almost this exact same dot matrix printer that I used for many many years. Kudos on using the Spectrum, but the amazing thing to me is that the hard drives act as speakers.
Here it is… the remix of Radiohead’s “Nude” :
Big Ideas (Don’t get any) from 1030 on Vimeo.
Creative makes sound cards. Sure they make alot of other things now, but they built their business on sound cards. They succeeded a thrived in the very early PC market to make soundout of PCs better and better. This is where the good part ends.
There are many constants in PC hardware, and one of those is that Creative drivers suck. I mean, there are other companies known to have substandard drivers or to not make very frequent updates. But I bet if there was a poll of the ones most well known for this, Creative would clearly be at the top. Another bad thing Creative is known for is misleading advertising and product specifications. By misleading I mean total untruths. No matter how many times their shady product details are revealed for the truth they are by many respected hardware reviewers, they still seem to one-up themselves.
I won’t be going into the whole history of this, because frankly it just requires a few words in Google like “creative misleading” or “creative shady” or something similar, and you will get more than you will ever want to read. And you know what you won’t find? You won’t find one Creative representative denying any of it.
But, this article is about some current topics.
First: Creative has a second-wave of X-Fi sound cards. These sound cards are different from the previous few X-Fi sound cards in one important way: They don’t have an X-Fi chip in them at all!
Second: Creative doesn’t want your old non-X-Fi card to work in Windows Vista. Y’see, Creative hardware of past generations work fine in Vista. There is absolutely nothing hardware oriented keeping them from working, and working well. But Creative won’t make drivers for them. Not only that, but when a intrepid user modified the drivers for the Audigy card he owned, Creative handed him the Cease and Desist rigamarole. (Because that link is straight to the Creative forums, and possibly could be modified or removed at any time, I include the post in it’s entirety after the break.)
Mac hacked in two minutes
Mar 28
Apple fanatics have one less tic mark to their list of all that is good.
Linux fanbois can continue their chest pumping, however.
Apple users tend to be a fanatical lot, often expressing their choice in pre-fabricated computing platforms as if it were a religious experience. There is no sense running down comparisons or arguing any points, it’d be just like arguing religion or politics. This is really odd considering it is just an electronic device. Even if it comes in a pure white candy shell.
One of the common things to hear supporting the halo around Apple is that “Macs don’t have viruses”. Apple even proclaims it in one of their Mac vs. PC ads, and on their website. Of course, this is false, but don’t try explaining that. They also state that because they use a Unix base for Mac OS X, that there are little to no vulnerabilities.
But Thursday, in an international security conference called CanSecWest in Canada, there was a little hacking competition waged. The “PWN 2 OWN” competition featured a $10000 grand prize to hack into a laptop and steal a file. First one wins. Charlie Miller did it in 2 minutes.
The machine was running the latest Mac OS X version with all security patches. Due to agreements at the conference, the way he hacked it will not be revealed until after Apple has been fully notified of the breach. But the contest had stipulations that the contestant could only use software pre-installed on the system. So, the likely vulnerability was Apple’s Safari web browser.
The thing is, he could have gone after any OS, as the three laptops offered for exploiting were one each of the Mac OS X, Windows Vista, and Ubuntu Linux varieties. Why did Miller choose to target the Mac? Because it was the easiest.
