Posted on August 28th, 2008 in Uncategorized by tsabrack || No Comment
Latetly I had to reinstall Nero on a new computer. I didn’t had to do that for a long time. I know things change quickly in IT world, but not that quickly and Nero is still the best software around to burn CD.
But what has change is the size and pain to install Nero. It’s so bloated now that it takes more than 800Mb to get a version of Nero, which is needless to say completely overkill to me. I just needed to burn a CD to back up photos from my holidays.
After rumbling around a little bit on the web, i found a very nice effort by a person who’s website is here. You will find there two different installations that weight less than 30Mb (which is a piece of cake to download), one for the latest 7.x and the other one for 8.x. Both of them are suitable for Vista which is a plus (because earlier version of 7.x version of Nero did not work under Vista).
I suppose for sake of saving traffic on his website the files are hosted on a third party site called iFile.it. For those who wonder where to click to download the file, you have to click on the “Request download ticket” button roughly in the middle of the page.
For those who wonder, this installation doesn’t wave any legal license requirement, it just makes the installation quicker and easier. You still have to purchase a valid license if you don’t already have one.
Posted on June 13th, 2008 in Culture, Society by tsabrack || No Comment
I was utterly astonished today when i found an article telling that quite high percentage of young employee (18-24) would seriously consider quitting their job if they cannot have access to Facebook during work time. It took me a second to realize, i even read the article first lines several times to make sure it wasn’t a joke.
I’m not particularly old, so I should be able to understand the reasoning (if there’s one) behind the choice of those people … but this is totally alien to me. I could understand reason like lack of insurance or other benefits, a lengthy and expensive commute, Limited advancement opportunities. But this really beats me.
Facebook, you can find a lot of excuses and turn it around all you want, is NOT a working tool, and I can see no reason why people are compelled to use it during working hours. How would those people feel if they had a job where you have NO Internet access at all, or where you cannot access your webmail (it is quite common in a lot of big companies, especially in banks), for security or productivity reasons.That makes be wonder in what world they live, how can such people work at all ? Their list of priority is seriously messed up. What will they become when they grow up (If they do..). Those people may eventually have kids later, what kind of education will they be able to give them ?All those question seriously trouble me. As a word of the end, I’ll quote the original article :
Grow up Punk!
Alex.
Posted on June 12th, 2008 in Apple, EFI-X, Hackintosh, News, OSX by tsabrack || 2 Comments
Not so long ago, Psystar hit the headlines by announcing they would commercialize a retail PC with OSX pre-installed on it. They were using a modified version of Mac, know has Hackintosh ( a patched installer of the OSX).Although it was quite nice, there was nothing new has Hackintosh have been around for some time. Those PC were surely much much cheaper than a Mac, but that didn’t come without drawbacks, one of the most serious being that those PC couldn’t (and still cannot) benefit of the Mac Updates, as any update install could render the system totally unstable of even worse unstable or totally unable to work.
Those compatibility/update problems are due to hardware inside of Macs. The Macs uses precise hardware which are the same throughout a whole series, and there’s only drivers for that hardware. The chances that you PC has exactly the same components as a Mac are very thin although not impossible. But even in that case, there’s some components that cannot be bought for PC, that make the Mac unique.
But this uniqueness might come to an end, or more precisely we may be able get around it. A company called EFI-X, seems to be on the verge to commercialize a dongle that allow to solve that problem. According to their webpage, with that nifty dongle people could install OSX on a retail PC without having to use a hacked installer, and even use the Apple Updates.
Apple left opened the Pandora box opened after Psystar did his coup, by not reacting to it. If they really let EFI-X start selling their device, that could a real 180 degree turn in Apple historical policy (that some may call Elitism). That change although quite astonishing, may not be such stupid thing to consider. For a proof the change in distribution of the Iphone which change from a confidentially distributed device to a Worldwide heavily distributed toy.
Even if they don’t officially acknowledge the device, they might very well turn their head in the other direction and let it spread. This would ensure much more presence on the OS market, and allow them to “steal” some more from Microsoft while they are weak.
See you on the 23rd of June, 2008, the announced release date of the device.
Alex.
Posted on June 10th, 2008 in HK, Hong Kong, Restaurant. by tsabrack || 2 Comments
When you arrive in Hong Kong, you can see there are restaurants everywhere. Some are easy to find, some are good. The real difficulty is to actually find the ‘good’ ones, especially if like me, you’re not a Cantonese speaker (or reader). You can ask your friends, but if you don’t know much people here, you’re pretty much lost.
I found a general rule that seems to work pretty well to identify good restaurants. I noticed that if you see a lot of people queuing regularly in front of a restaurant, there there’s good changes it’s a good one. Now that works fine and for the restaurant in places you visit regularly, but if you feel like looking for a particular kind of restaurant, or search in an area you want to explore, you’re screwed.
But not everything is lost. There’s a really nice site to help you in your quest of food. It’s called Openrice. If very well documented, lot’s of references and comments. It tell you what restaurant there’s in each area, the kind of food you can find in that restaurant. There’s usually lot’s of comments from users, so you can get an idea. Very often there also pictures posted by users of the site.
One little thing, the site is in Chinese. But our good friend Google is there, and the google translated site works pretty well.
Enjoy your Dinner.
Alex
Posted on June 10th, 2008 in Mac, Mac Fusion, Mac Fuzion, iPhone by tsabrack || No Comment
While everyone is focusing on the new IPhone news at the keynote at the WWDC conference, a rumor is building up: A new mac might be unveiled soon. This new Mac, would be aimed toward developers :
This new Mac might represent the missing mac that a lot of people have been waiting for, something in between the all powerful MacPro and the tiny puny Mac-Mini, a desktop mac for those who don’t wan’t an IMac.
We’ll see in the coming days if more informations comes in about that.
Alex
Posted on June 4th, 2008 in Oracle, Tips And Tricks by tsabrack || No Comment
Here’s some tricks that can help in daily work with oracle. Very often, I need to extract query result from Oracle, or to be more precise ask people to send me query results. It is quite easy to save a file, that’s very true but the formatting is excruciatingly unreadable. There’s a flurry of tools that can allow you to export your query, but sometimes the only things you have at end because you’re connecting to production environment is a good old Sql*Plus.
Here’s the trick. Connect to your DB using Sql*Plus and used the following actions:
SET markup HTML onspool test.htmlSELECT * FROM mytable;spool offSET markup HTML off
When you type command “SET markup HTML on“, your command prompt will look “funky” don’t worry it is perfectly normal. After you exit you will find a nice html file. Certainly not the best format, but much more readable than plain 80 column text.
Alex.
Technorati Tags: Oracle , HTML, Output
Posted on June 3rd, 2008 in Fun by tsabrack || No Comment
Whenever someone hear about panda, they usually think about the nice cuddling teddy bear … Although their are really cute animals they are also an endanger species, and they number are decreasing, and they live in a really restricted
zone.
Now if they looked like this, people would certainly think twice before cutting their trees:
Technorati Tags: Fun, Panda, Gun
Posted on June 1st, 2008 in Android, Mobile, Technology, iPhone by tsabrack || No Comment
Last year when Apple launch his Iphone, it certainly started a revolution in the previously rather sleepy market. Now a year later, the eyes of millions of people are glimmering toward the future Iphone revision of the mobile device, the Iphone 2. During the past year, Apple has developed and enhanced his new product, it has also radically change his commercial strategy, in order to be much more aggressive on the market and much more widespread.
Now although Apple has clearly fix what will be the next standard of the future devices, the other major companies certainly haven’t slept all this year. Just like Apple last year another player which was previously a total strange to mobile devices is about to enter the ring, namely Google.
But unlike Apple, instead of developing their own device and going solo on the market like a good old Cowboy, they choose to develop a framework that will be installed on other mobile constructors (They Probably intended initially, at least in the US, but as they could not win the auction for the 700 MHz band, this will probably have to wait).
So what is exactly Android ? Android is a software platform and also an OS developed for mobile devices (the underlying is based on Linux). It was developed by Google as well as the other members of the Open Handset Alliance. The Alliance is formed by Mobile operators, Software companies, Commercialization Companies , Semi-Conductor and finally Handset manufacturers. Amongst then we can cite :
- China Mobile, NTT DoCoMo
- Ebay, Google
- Intel, NVidia
- HTC, LG, Motorola …
(a more exhaustive list is available here)
Just like Apple, Android offers developpers a SDK, but unlike the Iphone SDK, it is available on Windows (XP and Vista), MacOs and Linux. Moreover, Google is also 10 Million US dollars prize for a competition that will reward the coolest softwares. In the Android Developer Challenge I, the 50 most promising entries received by April 14 will each receive a $25,000 award to fund further development. Those selected will then be eligible for even greater recognition via ten $275,000 awards and ten $100,000 awards. The Top 50 Applications (results from Android Developer Challenge Part 1, Round 1) were announced on 12 May 2008 (source Wikipedia).
Now enough talking, let’s see what’s under the groom’s dress and discover what Android is capable of.This first video demonstrate a live demo of Android :
This one demonstrate the use of the accelerometer in Google Maps. Quite inmressive :
Last but not least, here comes Pac-Man 
As we can see the battle for the future of mobile device is not over yet, I’d even say it has barely started. Let’s see who will next retaliate for our greatest pleasure
Source: Android Community
Posted on June 1st, 2008 in Blog, Tips And Tricks by tsabrack || No Comment
There’s several answers to that question. First it’s a classic Greek text, which is more than 2000 years old. Now you can ask “What is does it have to do with this blog” ? Have suddenly turn all the Geeky things and gadgets ?
The answer is “No”, obviously ;). “Lorem Ipsum” happens a common place holder in Computer science, and more specifically in site design. I’ve already wrote about creating a test blog, Lorem Ipsum is how you’re going to inject a little bit of “Meat” into your blog in order to make more real. Here’s an example of the kind of text it generates :
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean at velit. Vestibulum nibh metus, blandit sed, porttitor quis, adipiscing in, enim. Praesent convallis nulla eu lacus. Donec purus. Maecenas in mi et eros volutpat congue. Aenean posuere libero a elit. Etiam risus. Curabitur et arcu et tellus fermentum accumsan. Mauris nulla elit, auctor sit amet, dapibus a, convallis quis, nibh. Morbi vel quam. Sed vel sem eu velit dictum tincidunt. Quisque eget nibh non lacus blandit tempus. Nulla ullamcorper. Mauris elit dui, blandit eu, aliquam ut, commodo sed, dui. Praesent ante.
With that handy tool, you can make your test blog/site more meaty. For more details about this Random text generator, you can check directly the Lorem Ipsum site.
Posted on June 1st, 2008 in Blog, Tips And Tricks by tsabrack || No Comment
Some may wonder what’s the point to have a test blog. They may argue that it’s already enough work to maintain one without having another one sitting on your lap. Well that’s true, maintaining a blog can ask a lot of dedication. But sometimes you may want to make some deep change into your blog (that’s also true for a site, and an software development in general) that can have huge repercussions to your blog, rendering it inaccessible.
The best example is when you’re putting you’re dirty fingers in your blog template. When you do that, you can reallllly easily wreck havoc into your blog and render totally inaccessible.
So now that we’ve seen why let’s ponder the how. That’s pretty simple in fact. Go to your Dashboard (if you’re using blogger) , and click on "Create Blog". You will have to follow the same step you followed when you create your first blog.
Now go back to your Dashboard and Click on "Settings" for the blog you’ve just created. Then go to Settings > Permissions. On that page check the section "Blog Reader" and change the select item in "Who can read this blog?" to "Only blog author", like this :
Here you do, you now have a nice test blog where you can do whatever you want before trying it on your real one.
Alex
