June 30, 2006
Hacking Hotmail

Are people really this stupid?

Well, yea, I guess they are...

Posted by Arcterex at 10:59 PM
June 27, 2006
The New Digg.com

So my latest favorite website Digg.com released "Digg version 3" on Monday. I admit that I tend to assume that the three people that read this site also read slashdot and (now) digg, and don't repeat stories that I find there on here. Anyway, the new version of digg has some new things, some good, some bad, and some completely indifferent. I'll note these below with :-) :-( and :-| respectively.


  • More ads :-( (though I don't see because I have the adblock extension running
  • More division of topics, now there is a "video" section for example. I tend to read from the 'all' though. Each category/subcategory has it's own RSS feed as before. :-)
  • Some new views such as Cloud view :-)
  • More interesting cool visualizations of digging activity (not here yet though) :-|
  • Tweaks to the buddy/friend management and features like stories that multiple friends have dugg (agreed upon). Cool, but no one is my friend on digg.... if I did have friends though I'd give it a :-)
  • Redesigned and now 110% Web 2.0tm/r/c compliant

The only real downside I see is the amount of stories that go onto the frontpage is going to double/triple/quadruple, meaning it'll be harder to catch up. Conversely, slashdot's story posting seems to have slowed down recently. It's still about a story an hour, it just "feels" slower compared to the rapid fire digg.com site activity.

Posted by Arcterex at 02:15 PM
Spiderman 3 Teaser

To echo my buddy Dave..... *bounce bounce*:

Spider-Man 3 - Large.


Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Posted by Arcterex at 01:16 PM
June 26, 2006
Pickle Phobia

From the tales of the wierd comes a Maury show clip about a girl with a pickle phobia. Now that's messed up. I just wish Maury would tell these people <godfather voice>BE A MAN!</godfather voice> Seriously, these people have some fubar issues and are put on display for the ridicule of the TV audience.

Posted by Arcterex at 12:59 PM
June 25, 2006
Relaxifying Your Workspace

I need to do about 10 of these suggestions!

Posted by Arcterex at 10:11 AM
June 22, 2006
New Superman Returns Trailer

Very recently posted, lots of new tidbits, very cool looking. The advanced screening people that I've heard have been raving about Superman Returns.... can't wait! View the trailer here.

Posted by Arcterex at 02:20 PM
Jon Stewart on Gaming and Gamers

Yet another hilarious and pretty accurate report on gaming and gamers and what the US congress is doing about them. Yay for election year grandstanding? :)

Posted by Arcterex at 02:00 PM
DIY LED Clock

Here's a neat little home project.... know those clocks with the LEDs floating in the air? Here are the instructions to make your own. Needs a bit of electronics experience to make a board yourself it looks like, but if you do, or can rent an electronics nerd with some pizza and beer, could be a neat addition to your office :)

Posted by Arcterex at 09:05 AM
June 21, 2006
The Daily WTF Video Link

As seen on forgetfoo is this video.... YouTube - Zuiikin Gals II. I'm at 1:20 of the 3:52 and my ears are bleeding and I'm considering jamming a pen into my eyeball to make the pain stop. It's possibly the most screwed up thing I've ever seen, and yet it's so simple.... just hot oriential girls in bikinis (SFW) saying things. Well, except for the randomly interspersed old men on the street.

I recommend you watch it with the sound off and imagine the bikinis are much smaller.

3:05. OK, I'm bailing.

Posted by Arcterex at 03:36 PM
New 3D Desktop Management

I watched the videos from the BumpTop Prototype site and it's definately ingenious.... making windows and files act very much like paper on a desk. However, I thought that we used computers because organization was easier than moving papers around on a desk? :) Watch the video to see what you think.

Posted by Arcterex at 12:05 PM
June 17, 2006
Amazing New Crysis Video

Wow, and I thought farcry was realistic looking. Check out this 14 minute Crysis video. Amazing looking with a lot of cool stuff that looks like it'll help gameplay (destructable environments) and not just be eye candy. Too bad the resolution is so crappy :(

Posted by Arcterex at 03:57 PM
Tell Where Your First Kiss Was

Another interesting Google maps/earth mashup is Where I Had My First Kiss . com which lets you tell and show the world where it was.

Posted by Arcterex at 12:05 PM
June 16, 2006
Some Interesting Tech History

Jensen Harris has a neat post with some history on the close button entitled You Windows 3.1 Lovers! He also discusses some of the changes regarding the UI in the latest version of MS Office.

Posted by Arcterex at 10:13 PM
June 15, 2006
Punishin Your Microsoft Devloper

A very funny video of how MS has been innovating lately. Punish your Microsoft developer is apparently from an MS event, but as it's the first time I've seen it I figured I'd share.

Posted by Arcterex at 01:31 PM
Hacking the RAZR

I know some friends of mine have the motorola RAZR cell phone, so this link might be interesting to them. Hack the Motorola RAZR V3 Tutorial covers software upgrades, changing logos, changing how the system works, etc.

Posted by Arcterex at 11:45 AM
Paris Hilton's Music Video

Please let her 15 minutes be over soon (you have to log in to see a black and white video Paris Hilton singing and flouncing around). Tick, tock, tick...

Quite frankly I think the video that came up as suggested of two orange cats is far more amusing and cute :)

Posted by Arcterex at 06:24 AM
June 14, 2006
How To Shave

43 Folders has a nice review of Shaving tips.

Posted by Arcterex at 03:28 PM
June 13, 2006
Tekken with Humans

This is neat, a couple of humans doing humans. Fake effects, real moves. Nifty.

Posted by Arcterex at 10:13 AM
June 10, 2006
Seth MacFarlane of Family Guy Speaks at Harvard

Very funny video of Harvard Class Day Speech 2006. Via Digg.

Posted by Arcterex at 02:00 PM
June 09, 2006
NippleByte Released

It's like Digg, but for naked chicks. ForgetFoo unleashes NippleByte.

Posted by Arcterex at 10:53 PM
jPod Review

BoingBoing has a nice review of Coupland's JPod: the Anti-Microserfs.

Posted by Arcterex at 04:16 PM
Gaming in 2007

Gamespot has a nice list of reasons why it's worth to be a PCgamer in 2007. The ones I knew about and was excited about were Spore, Crysis, and Intersteller Marines. The list is pretty long, not just FPS like I like, but role playing and puzzel games as well. I also hadn't heard about Medal of Honor:Airborne Assault before, I loved that game before I discovered Call of Duty, I'm looking forward to a graphically updated version of MoH:AA.

Posted by Arcterex at 09:19 AM
June 07, 2006
Vista Beta 2 To be Available to the Public

So this is pretty intersting.... according to a digg story, Vista Beta 2 will be available for public download later today.

I'm not sure of a couple of things... is this only for people with MSDN access, or a 100% public beta such as they did recently for office 2007? What restrictions will be placed on it (I'm going to guess it'll be expireware)? Etc etc.

On the other hand, this is pretty brilliant. Vista is the "next big thing" for the home desktop market, and all the magic 8 balls say that it'll be available to the public Q1 2007 at the earliest. That's another 6 months before it can start being realisticly in the hands of the average joe, and then only at either the cost of the OS or bundled with a new computer. This way everyone can get access to it, free, get the brainshare going, and have an extra 6 months of (in theory) training to get used to the OS which will be a lot different than XP.

I wonder if they'll be taking tech support calls, or will be relying on the QA software built into the OS itself? Either way, it'll be interesting to see if this makes the final release less buggy and more secure.

Also, it kicks the pirates in the balls a bit. No more need to download the torrent from pirate bay, grab it straight from MS. Of course, this also goes along with my theory that MS actually likes pirates or at least does the minimum to protect their software from piracy so it gets into the hands of the most people, and increases their brainshare. Now, they have been cracking down lately, but when you have 90% of the market, you don't need to spread much further.

Things I'll be looking for...

  • Memory use.... Beta 1 uses about 600mb of ram doing nothing compared to 200mb with XP, hopefully that's debug uglyness that'll be gone.
  • How will games play? Most of my windows experience is for gaming, so it'll be interesting. Most of my hardware is pretty common so drivers shouldn't be an issue (knock wood).
  • Are the security warning popups that bad?

Anyway, I'll be downloading and installing this over the vista beta 1 install I have from an earlier torrent on my second hard drive :)

Update: Downloads now working.....

Posted by Arcterex at 03:46 PM
GNOME Art Tutorials

The GNOME art site has set up some GnomeArt Tutorials on the gnome wiki.

Posted by Arcterex at 11:53 AM
June 06, 2006
Video of Man Flying over Mountain

Ok, it's not really flying, but it's pretty close. I've seen this before sometime ago, and it needed a repost. Here's a video of the Flying Dude. He's more like a flying squirrel though. Check it out though, very cool vid.

Posted by Arcterex at 04:55 PM
Tour of Google Spreadsheets

Check out this Google Spreadsheets - Sneak Peek. Personally I think this is cool. The technology is nothing hugely new, and the features of course don't match excel at all.... however, the number of users who use all of excels features, or really use anything more than basic spreadsheet capability, are probably pretty low. This, combined with the integration of google spreadsheets into gmail/gtalk/calendaring, etc etc, will make this something to watch anyway, especially with google's purchase of writely will make google something to (continue) watching.

Posted by Arcterex at 04:51 PM
The Photographers Screensaver

This is pretty cool... the owner/writer/creator of pbase created what he calls The Photographer’s Screen Saver. Basically it displays image on your screen, but has a few nice tweaks for multiple monitors and image paths. Looks cool, check it out.

Posted by Arcterex at 03:37 PM
June 05, 2006
Accounts Disabled on UFies.org

Just an FYI that I did some looking through accounts on the server that hadn't been logged into for more than a couple of years, or that combined with only having spam in their mailboxes. The users have been disabled, if any of these are in error let me know and I'll fix them up. This probably won't affect anyone, but I figured I'd throw it out anyway.

Posted by Arcterex at 02:58 PM
20 Great Perl Modules

Chris Ball has a presentation online which highlights some great perl modules.

Posted by Arcterex at 12:23 PM
New Slashdot.org Look and Feel

I had a big *blink* moment a second ago when I surfed to Slashdot and discovered they'd implemented the new look and feel. That's pretty big, seeing as they've had the same look for a good ... uhm.... well, forever. I think the new look is a bit more modern looking, a bit odd (that can be written off to the fact it's brand new), and still keeps the "slashdot look" which is what the requirement that CmdrTaco had.

Posted by Arcterex at 12:01 PM
June 02, 2006
Amazing RC Plane Flight

Now this is an amazing demonstration of RC plane flying. This guy does just about anything you can imagine with a fair sized plane in a school gym. Makes it stand on it's head, balance in the air, and flip and flop around in amazingly tight quarters. Check out the video. Thanks Dana for the link.

Posted by Arcterex at 08:22 AM
June 01, 2006
Hard Drive Encrypting Virus Cracked

If you've been hit by the ugly virus that encrypts all the files on your hard drives and then extorts you for cash, you're lucky. The article states that the virus has been cracked and that the password you need is: "mf2lro8sw03ufvnsq034jfowr18f3cszc20vmw".

Fun times :)

Posted by Arcterex at 03:15 PM
Calling all Windows Security Experts... Firewall Dashboard 1.1 Now Available

I know I rag on Microsoft, and Windows security, but at least there are those out there doing something about it. My ex-boss, ex-coworker and good friend Dana has just released version 1.1 of Firewall Dashboard. New features include:


  • Import/export of config for deployment to multiple machines
  • A new plugin to aid in remote monitoring for managed service providers
  • New reports and the usual array of bugfixes and tweaks

For those of you who don't know what Firewall Dashboard is, it's a firewall log report creation tool for Windows firewalls. Probably pictures speak louder than words, so just hit the screenshots.

Posted by Arcterex at 08:47 AM