Hurricane Haiku

Posted on September 15, 2005 by Arthur

A hurricane hurles
At hurricane force strength. Huh?
another outage

minor stanzaic corrections

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Hurry, Ophelia

Posted on September 15, 2005 by Arthur

I ophelia tracksaw that Ophelia is slowly skimming off the Eastern US coast, meaning that it most likely will do the same over here at the Atlantic coast. It only moves at a speed of 3mph, too. That’s 5 km/h for you North Eastern Europeans. Juan hit NS with a speed of 50 km/h: if I’m not wrong, its eye travelled straight alongside the highway 102, hitting Truro between 12:30 am and 1:00 am. I know because I remember that, fondly, so to say. (Anyways, the weather office has a great Juan Recap site too. I was not even aware of that one). Remind me next time to make audio recordings of the sound of a hurricane.

Right. Here’s an interesting remark made by a Nova Scotian Hurricane Center employee (or researcher): he was almost certain that Ophelia would weaken because of the colder water in the Atlantic. However, he said, (emphasis mine) ‘waters around Nova Scotia have been extremely warmer than normal’. Now that is worrying.

09/15/05: Weather warning in effect for Nova Scotia.

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Donuts

Posted on September 14, 2005 by Arthur

Ddonutsonuts! Plenty of donuts. Blue ones. Donuts Blogs, Doughnuts, FlickR Donuts, Pre-baked donuts and uh, oh, FREAKING SCARY DONUTS.

Your Daily xsamplex will continue tomorrow.

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Hearing. Aid.

Posted on September 14, 2005 by Arthur

One article that caught my eye was this one over at Ars Technica: The iPod generation that becomes deaf (originally via Slashdot/Wired article):

Researchers fear the growing popularity of portable music players and other items that attach directly to the ears — including cell phones — is contributing to hearing loss in younger people.

Interesting to read that the researchers observed that a large percentage of the Walkman generation (isn’t that the same as the GenX40 generation?), the people currently in their 40s, appear to have the typical ‘tinnitus’ problem associated with loss of hearing.

Can you hear me now?

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Muhahaha

Posted on September 14, 2005 by Arthur

Hey. Google has added Blogsearch. Fantastic, eh?.

A quick search tells me that yours truly isn’t even listed. On any search engines. That’s good news.

update: 7:11 PM, Looks like Slashdot is down. Must have been because of the Blogsearch stuff.
update: 7:20 PM, oh wait, they’re back!

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Moo Cow

Posted on September 13, 2005 by Arthur

Moo-cow

Niels’ How-To documentation

(Good stuff)

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Missing in action

Posted on September 13, 2005 by Arthur

Earlier today, I had an error coming up while installing a piece of Microsoft software: ‘The Installation/Removal of a Previous Program Was Not Completed’. After a search in both the filesystem and registry, I ended up finding the culprit in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\system\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager section. Apparently, one of its keys (PendingFileOperations) was still not empty, therefore not allowing me to continue installation.

The registry: what can one say about that monstreous part of Windows. Here’s something I’ve been wondering about: why was there no ‘datestamp’/’timestamp’ field added to (any) key added or modified in the registry? It would have saved time to figure out which key was added.

Posted in Ordinateurs | Comments Off on Missing in action

HCC is going to be…

Posted on September 13, 2005 by Arthur

I read that the Dutch National Post (KPN) is taking over the Dutch internet provider HCC-net. To be more precise, it’s actually KPN’s subsidairy XS4ALL (More on XS4ALL’s exciting service over at Niels’ [English!]).

GolfieryYahren ago, the HCC (organizer of the infamous Dutch ‘HCC-dagen’) was a non-profit organization focussed on helping out computer freaks, generally by promoting people to start ‘user interests groups’. So many interests groups too: from modeltrains to computer languages. From Atari groups to MSX user groups. Those were amazing days and those days literally ended after their monthly magazine (HCC magazine) was bought up by a big Dutch publisher. I remember a stink around the editor-in-chief, who was replaced by a more commercial minded editor. The HCC-days? They went from happy-few-but-hands-on stuff moods to, well, you’ve-gotta-buy-it-here moods! I’m not sure anymore, if buying computer stuff at the HCC days still equates buying stuff cheap. Or if attending the HCC-days actually means keeping up with the guys and girls behind the stands (DOSBoss West rules, I hear Alfons still saying): the dufty ones, you know the ones that tell the bits apart from the bytes.

I bet it doesn’t matter anymore and that’s exactly where the organization, the HCC specifically, lost its charm.

Posted in Those-wonder-years | Comments Off on HCC is going to be…

September 11th

Posted on September 11, 2005 by Arthur

It’s No september 11th on frontpageSeptember the 11th, and look at the CNN’s frontpage of their website! Just a link to the memorials. I’m shocked.

Alan (and Alfons in the comments) has a brief posting about that specific day. I do recall everything too, including my first thoughts. I also remember receiving e-mails, e-mails that seem to have disappeared. The archives in my e-mailer of choice at that time (Eudora) literally stop at the date of 09/11/2001: my e-mailer of choice afterwards only contains e-mails that start at and around October of that same year. What I do remember werethe arguments after the 9/11 tragedy: the Americans I considered to be friends turned out to be bloodthirsty and out for revenge. So much for Afghanistan, Iraq and winning the War on Terror.

Anyways, I myself decided to watch a set of DVDs of Battlestar Galactica (the 80s series), which was probably more sobering than watching members of the administration commemorate 9-11.

Posted in We-reflect-news | Comments Off on September 11th

Separated at birth?

Posted on September 10, 2005 by Arthur

Separated at birth

Has anyone ever noticed the similarities between Boing-boing’s Doctorow and Half-Life’s Freeman? Or am I the first one to notice this?

Wait: maybe there was a look-a-like contest.
Update 2: OK: one of them is a bit more chunkier (just like twins!), can you tell which one?

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Where is that file?

Posted on September 10, 2005 by Arthur

Weird news from The Netherlands: the criminal file on nuclear scientist Khan has been displaced, or as Dutch people would say ‘misappropriated’. Yesterday, a retiring judge for the Amsterdam judicial court who presided the Khan-case in the early Eighties, told reporters that she was surprised about earlier remarks from former prime minister Lubbers. Besides misplaced documents, she said, judicial errors and a lacklustre Justice department plagued the criminal case against Khan, things that (according to her) clearly show that the Dutch judicial system was gamed for political reasons.

Lubbers comments (which you can find at Expatica’s) about that time, clearly show how close the ties were between the (then) Dutch and US governments, that it doesn’t come to a surprise that documents ‘mysteriously’ disappeared.

Spies, misplaced documents and a bungling justice department. Add national protests against Pershing missiles, economical and political unrest, and you get a typical Eighties spy story. That is, a story where the end of it actually makes it into the history books because of the political implications and consequences of letting Khan off the hook.

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Et tu, compile

Posted on September 8, 2005 by Arthur

Managed to compilefolder structure Regnessem, that is, a couple of hours ago. Compiling isn’t too much of a job: the original directory structure within the tarball (which I hope is the latest version of the program) has been setup nice and clean. A couple of things you need to know: leave the structure as it is but do create a Test/Plugin folder within the main ‘regnessem’ folder. When you compile the plugins, they all want to go in there.

First: import (or create a unit) out of the mshtml.tlb and Shelldocvw.dll. Leave the units in the folder as suggested (generally this will be your Imports folder). Note that the mshtml unit/library will be huge. When this is done, prepare for the worst part: the nsmsg components, that is if you have the sources of the components of the Exodus Jabber client installed. Both Exodus and Regnessem have a component called TExRichEdit and guess what: they’re not the same. If both branch owners are watching, one of them should start renaming the components: in my case I decided to rename Regnessem’s TExRichEdit to TExRegRichEdit, plus every occurrence in the sourcecode where that component is used. If I remember correctly, there should be 7 – 8 files: I used Fandro to look them up (eventually uncovering a minor bug in the search program itself).

Continue reading →

Posted in Hyperlinks, Ordinateurs, Programming | Comments Off on Et tu, compile

I seek you

Posted on September 8, 2005 by Arthur

Earlier today, I found this gem: a multi-messaging protocol supporting curses based messager CenterICQ. It works too, as you can see from the images. It really works, and you have to take my word for it. The good thing is that there is a Debian package for it in the unstable branch: if you run from Sarge/main or testing: just fire up a terminal and ‘apt-get -t unstable install centericq’ and you should be all set. While not really intuitive, CenterICQ is fast and sufficient for the quick messaging fix on your corporate intranet. That is if you’re not quick to be daunted by SSH and other 1337 stuff you do in your commandline environment. Currently CenterICQ supports ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and MSN (no really).

Stay right there: there’s more. Via-via, I discovered the slickest MSN-compatible messenger around and it’s called ‘Regnessem’. From what I can see (it’s all Japanese) it’s only Windows based (C++/Delphi), but my Japanese isn’t as good. The sourcecode can be retrieved from the regular location (tarball) by going to the Browse CVS pages.

I wonder, why is there a separate Sourceforge in Japan? Wouldn’t it be smarter to tie these SF servers? Or are there more Japanese programmers than European, North and South American programmers together?

Update: I’m surprised to find out that Japan hearts instant-messaging (2001 article). But then, I’m not.

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