MP3 Blogs

If you think finding and downloading the latest hits from kazaa and other p2p means is hard, wait to u hear this: MP3 blogs are now sprouting up everywhere.

An mp3 blog is simply just another blog, but one dedicated to mp3s and have links to those mp3s (to be downloaded). G8 thing is that these mp3s are generally much better than those tunes off your local radio station. The downside: they links get taken off after a week due to copyright issues.

Here are some neat ones:
copycommaright.blogspot.com
the-blues-blog.blogspot.com
www.londonlee.com/blog.html
weekly.jayceland.com
www.mysteryandmisery.com

More tv shows

After watching Joey Season 1 episode 3, im starting to feel that this show is here to stay (the laughs are getting more meaningful). in fact, i think im going to see this whole season (if i can).

CSI is back on the airwaves (at least in the US). Thanks to Brian Cohen (bittorrent), im able to watch it here in sweden too (why isnt there CSI here yet?), The first episode of the new season (season 5) is as great as ever. Man, I can't wait for more episodes to hit in the follwing months. And talking about CSI, seems like the popularity of this show has gotten yet another spinoff (remember CSI Miami): CSI N.Y. This one's a totally different animal from the original CSI (which i think's the best); the premieres hit the airwaves last week.

My conclusion after seeing it: very very different in many aspects. It featured much more gory and sinister crimes (a rougue Russian scientist who fled to the U.S. perfecting his art of locking women in their bodies to attain what he terms, 'freedom without the worries of life') plus there's a recurring don't-forgot-9/11 theme (the lead CSI lost a wife to the 9/11 incident and there's a scene in this first episode showing him standing outside the area where the towers once stood for the night). It's sure going to be interesting watching this new creation.

Memorable day yesterday

yes, very memorable indeed- collided headon with another bicycle. seems like the two chicks on the incoming bike were either 1) too blind to see that they are on the wrong side of the lane, 2) too blind to see me and not change lanes, 3) all of the above. Well, dont ask me how it happened cos i wasnt really paying attention to the road ahead of me (was thinking about the tok vids and the upcoming essays).

guess id have to be a little more careful next time (had a minor collision with a car last year around the same time :D).

Sims 2

Im really finding Sims 2 to be a very great tool in projects that require a video (using it to make the intros of 2 movies for the 2 TOK projects im working on). The best thing that happened to me 2day was finding the tool 'Game Extractor' from Watto Studios. Great thing its a freeware. as the name implies, it's an app to extract the files inside a game (im using it to get the awesome Sims 2 music files; others commonly use the app to mod games etc). am really hoping that the vids come out sweet.

Reviews

Resident Evil: Apocalypse was definitely great;the best part about the movie was plot, quite a big departure from the typical Hollywood movies that place an accent on the special effects (thought this one has a cool nuclear explosion at the end). I'm definitely looking forward to any sequel of this series (movie ends with the protagonist, Alice, being sucessfully mind-controlled by the big shots at Umbrella.

As for Joey the new TV series, I don't think it's definitely going where Friends was; the first two episodes were full of lame humour (duh, Joey = slow thinker). But, i'm going to see the third episode later today..

Nice sunny day

It's a bright and nice Saturday here. So here comes the 5th wave of free Gmail invites (1 per person ps):

https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-7b9d7b9a92-c0363e1f1e-35edd3ec16
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-7b9d7b9a92-f73c882b4e-e164e64aae
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-7b9d7b9a92-0c9888ef61-766faed038
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-7b9d7b9a92-db6fbefe0b-6496bd2e0f
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-7b9d7b9a92-dd69e16900-9a2018ae5a
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-7b9d7b9a92-d3fa9322fd-7e3cac40ad

4th Wave of Free Gmail Invites

There's more to pass around. Just wait for another day if you run out of luck:

https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-fb478fcdc1-68fcc4dadf-eb42cc0045
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-fb478fcdc1-85d7049b31-df9d4f7f6e
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-fb478fcdc1-2d6d578720-109a2b6cde
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-fb478fcdc1-872213a6ff-4df8fd5c74
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-fb478fcdc1-e5b108dcf7-9eaf1f6727
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-fb478fcdc1-b6e2130bd0-8f3aae5497

More Invites

More invites:

https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-6015a1605a-56df99830d-17d76f8122
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-6015a1605a-2823d52f0b-b979ebc620
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-6015a1605a-ca2b740ae6-764b5efb5b
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-6015a1605a-c00c6b591c-f8718be403
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-6015a1605a-d7f6985ae3-b1fff06ef5
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-6015a1605a-40a598e5ca-3462e107b7

More Gmail invites

Due to the responsive attitude to the free Gmail invites, I will yet again be offering 11 more invites. C'mon ppl. Grab it while you can (Please be considerate by registering one for urself and leaving some for others):

https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-7b9d7b9a92-348e483292-0f0ae50a13
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-7b9d7b9a92-6d1a429e75-34988029ac
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-7b9d7b9a92-bc4e27ce92-c62474b3ab
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-7b9d7b9a92-39188edceb-2fe872fd63
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-7b9d7b9a92-9bf7ea8288-4238a4e315
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-7b9d7b9a92-0d6ec47242-72043bf989
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-7b9d7b9a92-717cc38228-56dae2c2d8
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-7b9d7b9a92-e5088453a3-c3631df679
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-7b9d7b9a92-ea3431babf-1aa168bcc6
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-7b9d7b9a92-3b1f79b19d-5ee363dd0f
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-7b9d7b9a92-b6eb219909-05aefe22ab

More Free Gmail Invites

Here's the second wave. Do be considerate by just registering one for yourself. First come first serve :D. And yes, check back later 2day and 2morrow for more cos this campaign is going to last for the whole of this week

Invite 1
Invite 2
Invite 3
Invite 4
Invite 5
Invite 6
Invite 7
Invite 8
Inivte 9
Invite 10

Ouch. Gmail invites all taken up

Seems like after 10 mins posting 7 gmail invites on my blog (open to the public for grabs), all have been registered. Talk about perfect knowledge and demand meeting supply :D Anyhow, will b posting more 2morrow as well as the day after (have 30 more to give away). So if you came here looking for invites and got nothing, check by later. You might just be lucky :D

Creationism Rules

It's obvious that evolution is just a whole bunch of crap; most of the evidence that 'supports' it are outdated and even rejected by 'prominent evolutionists'.. Want scientific evidence: here they are:

http://www.darwinismrefuted.com
http://www.masterzenor.com/newsarch.html
And a great book called 'Refuting evolution' published by Answers in Genesis
( http://www.answersingenesis.org/)

Free Gmail invites

Im a nice guy, so here are free gmail invites for all ya folks. (This is the first blitz; check back 2moroow for more). And yes, ps click on the sponsered ads if you really are appreciative. Enjoy:

http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-717790d9f1-347ed13f04-742972c7f9
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-717790d9f1-68c013dd74-c3871983c1
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-717790d9f1-d819b4eb43-a47dc5a99f
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-717790d9f1-25b1586ab6-dcc22c8d83
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-717790d9f1-1d927ec1a5-ea352b110b
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-717790d9f1-593e119c24-f3c52c0a40
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-717790d9f1-0666c25eab-4fafd9cae0

Google Blog?

Was googling for the word 'blog' since Anna asked me what a blog is. Guess what? Stumbled upon Google's official blog. Very neat.

Happy Birthday Eric Blomqvist

Happy 18th birthday dude. Hope u like ecard of yours.

Hiding email address on public arenas from spam bots

Cool script that does just that:
http://www.mways.co.uk/prog/hidemail.php

Gmail as a blogging tool?

Here's something weird :-)
Screenshot: http://ion.gluch.org.mx/files/Hacks/gallina/images/gallina-0.1.png
(Tool called Gallina does just that-
http://ion.gluch.org.mx/files/Hacks/gallina/)

Article: Programmer turns Gmail into blogging tool
(http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/developer/0,39020387,39165718,00.htm)
'uilder: Gallina turns Gmail into a blogging tool - but has the writer
missed a trick?

A Mexican programmer has figured out how to turn Google's Gmail
service into a blog. Jonathan Hernandez posted a demo of his software,
called Gallina, together with the open-source code, on his employer's
Web site.

Gallina uses Gmail messages as blog entries, and the email service's
message star to signify the publish status. Email replies to
conversations are posted as comments to an entry. Because Gmail
provides 1GB of email storage space for free, Hernandez' software
makes that space available for the blog.

On his site, Hernandez said the software uses XML and XSLT -- a
language to specify how to transform an XML document of one type to
another document type. Anyone wanting to take advantage of Gallina
would need to install the application on a server, which would then
use Gmail to store the posts.

However, it may not please Google: the company's terms and conditions
explicitly disallow screen-scraping technology of the type used by
Gallina.

Hernandez's work was highlighted on geek site Slashdot.org where one
commentator noted that Google's existing free blogging service,
Blogger.com, already allows users to post entries using email. Blogger
also supports the Atom application programming interface for
developers, allowing them to build their own blogging applications. '

Joey and more

Seen the first episode of Joey, which was slated to be the unofficial
sequel to the TV-hit Friends, starring Joey (duh!). This new sitcom's
pretty unappetizing (maybe all first episodes are always like that).
Will be seeing the 2nd one prob 2morrow or later just to see if this
one's ever going somewhere.

Plus, AWESOME games just came out today on the p2p scene. Just
downloaded the whole Sims 2 game (played it for a couple of hours; was
really AWESOME; go to their website to see some awesome vids and
screenshots). Also have started downloading the expansion pack to Call
of Duty (United Offensive; the first was AWESOME), Star Wars
Battlefront (am a great Knights of the Old Republic fan- KOTOR for
short), and Panzers Phase One (Yup, a WW2 action game starring the
German Panzers; this game was brought to my knowledge some months ago
by Kai Weeks).

On the movie side, am almost done with the new Resident Evil sequel,
The Apocalypse. Will be seeing it later next week (the first one was
pretty cool). As for programs and apps, Norton Systemworks and
Internet Security (NEVER use the firewall and antivirus in these
suites; are d... slow and pretty crap; but the other stuff are sweet)
v 2005 has just splashed on the p2p scene a couple of days ago. Got
them but at this point in time, no available keygens are available for
'activating' them. Guess id have to wait, like last year.

More Gmail neat facts

Ever wondered why Gmail is 5 times much faster than Yahoo or Hotmail,
even when you are using that miserable dial-up? Here's what i found
out (i, like so many others with broadband, have often taken this fact
for granted):

Gmail is slick, smooth and very, very fast. It's speed in displaying
messages and switching between different views rivals that of desktop
mail clients, and many of the features on offer (the innovative
threading and the outstanding search capabilities) are leaps and
bounds ahead of regular applications. This is a web app that for the
most part works better than its desktop equivalents.

From the technical side of things, the performance boost is achieved
using a particularly clever piece of JavaScript trickery. The bulk of
the Gmail application is loaded in to memory in a hidden frame the
first time you visit the site. From that point on, emails, thread
listings and other views are loaded from the server as ultra
light-weight JavaScript data structures. Bandwidth usage is minimal,
and response times over broadband are virtually negligible from the
user's perspective. Even the email address auto-completion (a
particularly slick piece of the Gmail puzzle) calls back to the server
on every key stroke!

A screenshot for the 'New Gmail Ad Placement' entry I entered some days ago. 

THis is what waste is: Just lost 15 Gmail invites due to some ppl whom i invited but never activated the Gmail invites. Damn, 150 USD down the drain ... 

More Microsoft bashing

Why you should hate Microsoft:
http://microsuck.com/content/whatsbad.shtml

Think Bill cares about the bugs in your software? Definitely not, at
least it's not the reason why they release new versions of bloated
software. Straight from the horse's mouth.

Another article on Microsoft's dirty monopoly on the internet browser
(Get Firefox instead).

Microsuck

An article on how Windows XP really has hidden stuff that cannot be
unhidden (you have to start it in MS-DOS first, and then ... ) that
tracks your internet trackes (not even removing cookies or clearing
everything in your temp internet folder willl help).
-http://www.fuckmicrosoft.com/content/ms-hidden-files.shtml

Yes, I know, it's quite a vulgar internet address but the facks over
there have renamed their domain from **** Microsfot to Microsucks.
Their site can also be now accessed from http://microsuck.com/.

--
Your'n,
David Tan
Presiding Malmö Borgarskolan IB Council Chairman -www.ibcouncil.tk-
Get Firefox: http://www.spreadfirefox.com/community/?q=affiliates&id=4103&t=1

Comments on Gmail by some critics

'Gmail is slick, smooth and very, very fast. It's speed in displaying messages and switching between different views rivals that of desktop mail clients, and many of the features on offer (the innovative threading and the outstanding search capabilities) are leaps and bounds ahead of regular applications. This is a web app that for the most part works better than its desktop equivalents.

From the technical side of things, the performance boost is achieved using a particularly clever piece of JavaScript trickery. The bulk of the Gmail application is loaded in to memory in a hidden frame the first time you visit the site. From that point on, emails, thread listings and other views are loaded from the server as ultra light-weight JavaScript data structures. Bandwidth usage is minimal, and response times over broadband are virtually negligible from the user's perspective. Even the email address auto-completion (a particularly slick piece of the Gmail puzzle) calls back to the server on every key stroke!'

-http://www.sitepoint.com/blog-post-view.php?id=180963

New Gmail ads placement

Gmail's spotting some makeovers: among the new chages to this Beta version is the placement of ads (used to be on the sidebar but now, some Gmail accounts have them below an email message)

New Firefox ver out.

Hooray; after upgrading to the latest ver of Mozilla's firefox, I'm definitely now convinced that Firefox would be the next big browser. Flash back to the good old days of the Internet where Netscape was the only browser people could use and were contented with. Then next came Microsoft with their Internet Explorer (I.E.) which they bundled with all versions of all Microsoft OS (which commandeers a sweet 98% of the PC home market at its peak) after Windows 98. The result? I.E. is the dominant internet explorer. Most people also appreciated a faster, leaner browser than Netscape's All-in-one (with integrated chat and mail features). That was the main selling point of I.E. for me: lesser drainage of CPU power and wait time.

Flash forward to today, 2004 A.D: I.E.'s still the dominate broswer, but still lost some of their market share to other alternatives like Opera (paid solution) and Mozilla Firefox (open-source solution, like Linux) and its all-in-one alternative (the Mozilla suite). Firefox is my favourite among the three- it's the most like I.E. (standalone Internet browser with no useless addons like mail and chat features). But it's a notch above I.E.: it isn't plagued by all those holes,
security flaws, and bugs that are common to I.E.. Moreover, not only is it sleeker and meaner than I.E., it's very customizable with its open-source extensions and themes to jazz up the appearance of your browser. RIght now, I'm listening to some tunes with the FoxyTunes
extension without even opening any mp3 player (and hence less taskbar clutter), having instant 24/7 status check on my Gmail account without having even to login at all (has a very neat popup when I receive a new email), and surfing many sites with just one browser window open
(using the inbuilt tabs instead; like Opera).

The only prob i have with the latest ver of firefox is that some of the older extensions I used with my older version of firefox (0.7.3.) are not for this newer version; but new users to Firefox should enjoy every minute of their new Internet experience without any hitch, like I did 7 months ago. www.firefox.com

SP2 not entirely bulletproof

Seems like a new flaw has been discovered even after microsoft
released the latest batch of fixes (Win XP SP2). Guess which component
of Win XP is affected by this latest bug? Es muy correcto: the
infamous Microsoft Internet Explorer.

This should be a warning to all computer users to get IE alternatives
like Firefox (which is fully integrated with Gmail) or Opera. Here's
my quote of the day: 'Take back the Web with Mozilla's Firefox. Stop
using I.E.'

Finally, my long awaited SP 2 CD-ROM has arrived

You better trust Microsoft when they say it will take 3-4 weeks to ship something to you; that's right, I finally got my long-anticipated copy of Windows XP SP2 CD from Microsoft. On first sight, the packaging looks very cheap (compared to their free shipping pack of Office 2003 Beta last year) but the CD is way much better than the Office 2003 Beta CDs- there are 3D fibers interwoven into the front part of the CD with the word 'Genuine', not bad for a free CD that will is shipped to your doorstep for free. Plus, there are stuff on the CD that are not included in the downloaded version.

CD Rom Screenshots:

More conspiracy theories ...

I think i know y my gmail account was down for 6 hours. here's a probable explanation: bfore it went down, the last email i sent was to fillmybox@gmail.com. 4 those of u screen-savers fans
(GTech TV series), you prob already know that the host of the show, Kevin Rose, created a Gmail account to see if Gmail really allows you to have 1GB of storage and invited everyone to send a 5MB attachment mail to that address (fillmybox@gmail.com; duh). Well, seems like they achieved that goal (they went up to 1023 MB of storage since Google uses the definition of 1GB=1023MB of storage unlike some stingy providers like MSN). Oh well, guess Google wasnt happy with that idea and they prob created some sort of punishment if u were 2 send an email to that address now with ur gmail account (even though i sent a blank one w/o any attachments).

My Gmail down

Seems like my gmail account is down for the first time for more than 8 hours and independent of other gmails. Everyone's work just fine and my just says:

Server Error
Gmail is temporarily unavailable. Cross your fingers and try again in a few minutes. We're sorry for the inconvenience.

Just hope that Google will correct as soon as possible. I'm an email person, need to really use it; dont think i can wait much longer....

Gmail Down Yet again

Seems like the load on the gmail server is getting higher every day; as of now, 13:24 hrs, 13th Sept 2004, Gmail is officially down. Hope this fluke lasts for a few mins like all others i have encountered.

Donating me spare CPU cycles for the advancement of knowledge

just activated the google computer option of my google toolbar
(http://toolbar.google.com/dc/faq_dc.html). the donation of cpu cycles
doesnt seem 2 b slowing down me computer speed drastically.

the cause? to understand protein folding, protein aggregation, and
related diseases-http://folding.stanford.edu/

King Arthur

My Rating :
7 of out 10.

Synopsis
Action/Adventure and Drama 2 hrs. 10 min. As the Roman Empire crumbles (circa 450 A.D.), the British Isles are thrown into a loose anarchy as errant knights are entrenched in years of territorial battle. Then, one king emerges to unite them, Arthur, with his concept of a Round Table of united knights.

What i think of it
The thing that keeps your eyes glued to the screen would be the unique plot which contrasts to the legend most of us are used to. King Arthur is not some king who pulled the Excaliber out of Merlin's rock but rather is the leader of one of the most pretigious Roman calvary unit stationed in Britain to keep the Northern savages (the Saxons among one of them) out of the Southern Roman controlled part.

His men are not Romans, (he's a half Roman, half Brit) but rather from the Steppes, a territory that gave Rome all her males to be part of the Roman armies for 15 years in exchange for autonomy. These are some of the many differences that seperate this 'true tale' we see from the 'myth' we so commonly hear.

This movie has tons of epic battlescenes and reminsces on honour much like The Last Sumurai. A pretty good flick if you want something different from the boring ones that just keep rolling off Hollywood like Catwoman and the royal-craze ones likes Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement and The Prince and Me.

MainConcept Releases New H.264 Encoder Preview Version

MainConcept Releases New H.264 Encoder Preview Version
Latest mpeg 4 variation codec just released; cant wait for the encoders to come up in the next few weeks.

Gmail Changes

Seems like Google is putting the finishing touches on Gmail for its
release (hope it's not to next month). Here's something new Google did
2 Gmail from 2day: ' Warning: Spam messages more than 30 days old will
be automatically deleted'. Uh huh, seems like they're copying Hotmail
and Yahoo's method of reducing unnecessary space on users accounts.
Better not hit the delete button next time.

Gmail Filters

Gmail filter works in the way a g8 filter works- it looks for certain
stuff and then takes the action you specify it to take. how nice! what
im doing with the filter now is to make all incoming email with the
words IB Council be labelled with the IB Council label automatically
(also doing it with the Bittorrent emails i get). on average, i save
about 5-10 minutes a week just by not manually labelling my email (im
a label addict; makes the tons of email more organized; though
google's internal search engine pretty much sorts the email better).

also will b creating a new label called 'Emails with attachments'. Im
sure that's pretty self-explanatory...

Windows Media Player 10 out now

Windows media player, now in it's 10th incanation, is now out. yes yes, you may blabber that this is yet another microsoft product and not worth a second look. but, listen to the beta tester- the beta was a cool refresh from the 9.0 version. it's music and video capabilities far exceed any other alternatives out there; it should be g8 for all your needs. plus, there's increase support for pocketpc and other mp3 based devices (syncing music's now a breeze). Now the final version is out; so goodbye non-working features. WMP v10, here i come. (ps: click on the screenshot above 4 a surprise- an early christmas present :D; may take some time if ur on broadband...)

On Win XP SP2

Seems like microsoft is all cherry about the release of sp2, a major patch upgrade for sp2. among the included features are a no-frills firewall which turns on by default, automatic updates, and of course, those patches and fixes. well, it doesnt look 2 bad, for now at is.

Gmail mail recipient limit

seems like gmail, like hotmail, has a recipient cap, though it's much
more relaxed than hotmail's limit. also discovered that hotmail
actually has a limit of the number of emails you can send a day. very
interesting.

more 1 GB emails springing up everywhere

Thanks to google's innovative idea of giving 1 GB (1000MB) of email storage to the masses, more have been bucking this trend (or at least increasing their measly storage size like Yahoo to 100MB and hotmail soon (ha, they promised it will happen in August, so what's up now?) to 250MB). Another alternative is Spymac which offers both POP3 and web based access (Gmail only has webbased) BUT ive tested it first hand and it seems that i agree with most ppl who have used it, it's a real disappointment. Not only does the pop3 access fails to work, it's interface is pretty much lacklustre and is definitely second-rate to Gmail. Another one i just came across 2dya is an Arabic one (english version offered) ; there will surprisingly g8 reviews by some ppl; must try it meself someday (need a viable backup account)

No me gusta....

No me gusta mi muestra castellano. Hon heter Jonna. Very very strict teacher. wants me to hand in me homework 2 day. bah, even sven lundberg would beg to differ

New Gmail invite look

Gmail is getting a minor makeover: when you get invites now, a more
cool azure blue frame gets shown instead of the old menancing red
look. Here's some screenshots:

http://w1.401.telia.com/~u40135700/GmailInvitation.htm

DFX Audio Amplifier

True to its name, this app really enhances the music experience. esp
for a i-dont-care-what-music-is-playing person (have been putting the
Love Actually theme song on a repeat option; it's been playing like
the 20th time now)
--
Your'n,
David Tan

Gmail down.

Gmail seems 2 b in the habit of being down; it happened 2 times 2day. BUT, it was quickly patched up (5-10 mins). hope this doesnt happen again.

Hooray!

Google finally approved me Adsence application. Finally, a true reward for me hours poured into website publishing has arrived.