Author Archives: Arthur

Black Bars, huh?

Posted on May 6, 2007 by Arthur

Found on the flipside of a DVD case: This film is presented in “Widescreen” format. The black bars on the top and bottom of the screen are normal. That sucks. I was about to call Blockbuster about this problem. On … Continue reading →

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May 4th

Posted on May 4, 2007 by Arthur

I almost forgot to mention that it’s May 4th today, again. That means, if it’s your birthday today, it’s, let me think, I do remember this, on the same day as Pia Zadora’s! On the serious note: It’s also Remembrance … Continue reading →

Posted in We-reflect-news | Tagged | 5 Comments

SerialPort and C#

Posted on May 4, 2007 by Arthur

What you need to know before you plan to work on Serial port communication: 0. Create a good test environment. You may need com0com (earlier) which can simulate a loopback between 2 ports. 1. Carefully choose between non-blocking and blocking. … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Hyper-news

Posted on May 2, 2007 by Arthur

A couple of things that need to be mentioned: Before I signed off last night, I was surprised about the flood of Digg postings that had to do with that HD-DVD. There’s no way to link to a specific day … Continue reading →

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What software?

Posted on April 29, 2007 by Arthur

Two weird incidents: Earlier, I decided to look for a new version of The Gimp for Windows and ended up at WinGimp.org which provides downloadable Gimp versions, however, for a price. Right: I’m not sure if they’re related to the … Continue reading →

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Dead wood

Posted on April 28, 2007 by Arthur

Links then: 1. Earlier I mentioned “America at a Crossroads”, the excellent series broadcasted by the PBS. It appears that you might be able to find them as torrents online. 2. Via 3 Quarks Daily, too many ways of lacing … Continue reading →

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Guitar.

Posted on April 26, 2007 by Arthur

Alfons made this great photo of 2 cellos (violins? It’s actually hard to guess the size of them in that picture), after attending a concert in The Netherlands. I guess copying is the highest form of flattery: I was forced … Continue reading →

Posted in xsamplex | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Videos

Posted on April 25, 2007 by Arthur

Via CBC (article), I found out that Microsoft’s MSN Video relaunched (uh: beta it is). It’s heavily relying on the same company’s Soapbox software (here). And I guess you may just as well go to the official announcement, which is … Continue reading →

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Off-Key

Posted on April 24, 2007 by Arthur

Yo. Boris Yeltsin died. I can’t exactly remember how he became president of Russian Federation but I recall seeing video of Gorbachev’s last words as the official leader of the former CCCP. That was probably close after the August Putsch … Continue reading →

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Minor-Finer

Posted on April 23, 2007 by Arthur

I added a minor project to the ‘Current Project’ section (Right here), a program in C# that generates classes based on table meta-data. It’s simple and it works: there are a couple of tricks how to collect metadata from ODBC … Continue reading →

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Fraction Too Much Friction

Posted on April 21, 2007 by Arthur

Back in 83 or 84, Tim “Split Enz” Finn’s had a hit with ‘Fraction Too Much Friction’ in Europe (or maybe it was only a hit in The Netherlands 1). I mention this song because out of the blue, the … Continue reading →

Posted in Past-the-bridge | Tagged | 7 Comments

Amsterdam

Posted on April 21, 2007 by Arthur

Talking about the Manji documentary: there was some typical footage of Amsterdam from bars, cafes where you allowed to smoke pot and yes, its famous Red Light district. And of course the canals with the boats and the pretty houses. … Continue reading →

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America at a crossroad

Posted on April 20, 2007 by Arthur

All week, the PBS has been broadcasting an excellent series about the challenges we face in the world, particularly the conflicts between the religious and the secular worlds. Watching the series, I thought that the name of the series was … Continue reading →

Posted in The Chest Desire | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments