Author: alex

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Blog News Websites Caught !

The Courage to Live Consciously by Steve Pavlina

What is the difference between you and one of those legendary historical figures who did have such an impact? You both had many of the same fears. You both were born with talents in some areas and weaknesses in others. The only thing stopping you is fear, and the only thing that will get you past it is courage. What you do with your life isn’t up to your parents, your boss, or your spouse. It’s up to you and you alone.

Yes. I’ve gone through a period in my professional life that I consider to be ‘less’ than what it could have been, but accepted it because of several reasons : new life to take care of and a don’t-rock-the-boat,we’ll-take-care-of-you mentality that I believed. But in the end, even with the best of intentions, it’s me that has to decide what I want.

It’s only now that I have made a change myself in my professionnal life that I realise again that I have the freedom to do what I want and that it is that that I need.

It’s me that does the deciding, not anybody else.

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Blog News Websites Caught !

anti-telemarketing EGBG counterscript

I love this. Next time I get a telemarketer on the line for the latest new sofa, I’m gonna try this.

anti-telemarketing EGBG counterscript

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Blog News Hardware PSP

Sony : Memory sticks now up to 8 GB

The PSP fansites are abuzz with the fact that Sony has announced new memory stick produo cards with a capacity of 4 and 8 Gigabytes. I’ve seen several reactions in the bulletin boards by crazed iso collectors (aka pirates) that are just craving for these capacities to store their whole collection of games and ripped movies.

Too bad they will probably need a firmware upgrade to use the 8 GB stick, which will render their isos useless.
(Unless ofcourse, they will write their own firmware – now that I’ve read about what some of these coders are doing, I won’t underestimate them !)

And of course, for all of us : the godawful price you’ll have to pay to get one !

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Blog News Links Websites Caught !

HOWTO: Be more productive (Aaron Swartz: The Weblog)

HOWTO: Be more productive (Aaron Swartz: The Weblog)

Quite a good essay and something that I’ve been trying to ‘live’, with varying success.

“With all the time you spend watching TV,” he tells me, “you could have written a novel by now.” It’s hard to disagree with the sentiment — writing a novel is undoubtedly a better use of time than watching TV — but what about the hidden assumption? Such comments imply that time is “fungible” — that time spent watching TV can just as easily be spent writing a novel. And sadly, that’s just not the case.

Time has various levels of quality. If I’m walking to the subway station and I’ve forgotten my notebook, then it’s pretty hard for me to write more than a couple paragraphs. And it’s tough to focus when you keep getting interrupted. There’s also a mental component: sometimes I feel happy and motivated and ready to work on something, but other times I feel so sad and tired I can only watch TV.

If you want to be more productive then, you have to recognize this fact and deal with it. First, you have to make the best of each kind of time. And second, you have try to make your time higher-quality.

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Blog News PSP

PSP Firmware Comparison Chart from PSP-Vault

In my web statistics I’ve recently noticed several Google searches that look for more info on what you can do with a psp and at what firmware.

For those people, following PSP Firmware Comparison Chart will help you get a better picture of which firmware can do what.

And for all those people looking for UMD-launchers or how to run pirated games from a memory stick, I’ll complete the overview from the above website :

  • You can only run pirate copies of software from a 1.00 or 1.50 firmware. Why ? Because you need kernel access to use an UMD launcher, and from 2.00 upwards the kernel is encrypted.
  • Certain games already *need* 2.00 to run, and you can expect newer games to require 2.50 or higher and you can also expect that this will keep happening.
  • New PSP’s in Europe have firmware 2.00 or later installed on them.
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Blog News

Mr. and Mrs. Smith copy protection

Fox 20th Century are doing copy protection wrong, in my opinion. They’ve implemented a copy protection scheme on at least some dvd’s that does not allow you to watch dvd’s protected by it on your mac.

Today I hired the dvd ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ from our local video store, together with ‘Madagascar’ for Tom.

While Tom was watching his movie on the home cinema thingie, I tried watching Mr. and Mrs. Smith on my mac mini.

No Go. The mac-included DVD player software refused to see that there was a disc inserted, and if I quit DVD player the disc got ejected. At first I thought that this was a problem with the media, but that seemed ok.

On the back of the dvd box however, is a copy-protection symbol with the message : This DVD is protected from copying. This makes it impossible to make usable copies from it (translated from flemish).

All fine and well, but I wanted to watch the movie, not copy it ! Damn stupid way to go about it, if you ask me.

Videolan Client (VLC ) however, to the rescue. This open-source, cross-platform media player can read and play the disc without any problems, so that is what I used to watch my movie.

Oh, and after some googling, it appears that the new copy protection does not pose a problem for movie copiers : they either use Handbrake for Mac or AnyDVD for Wintel to copy the dvd.

So the end of the story is that once more, the guy who wants to watch the movie with the default software can’t, while the movie copier just uses another tool.

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Blog News Programming PSP

Python on the PSP

I have a programming urge coming over me. They come and go. Usually they leave when I realise (once again) how much hard work has to go into something before it is somewhat playable or workable. However, lately at work I wrote some bash and python scripts that really worked and had some useful output !

Sooo, what better to look at programming than trying to write the latest app or game for my psp that millions will download and enjoy so much they will elevate me to programmer god ?

Yeah.
I know.
I’m just kidding.

But the urge to go forth and create something is still there.

There are some tutorials floating around on the web on how to start programming your psp using the psp sdk kit (you need either cygwin or linux). I looked them over, but didn’t like it. I don’t have enough time to start learning C or C++ again. Plus pointers still make me shudder.

So I looked to other possibilities, like the luaplayer, which lets you write lua programs that ‘play’ on your psp.

Nah, don’t have time to learn lua either. So what can I still do to scratch that (psp) programming urge ? PSP Basic ? Doesn’t exist (yet). Python ? Hey ! Look what Google found !

I found a site by a french guy who has already ported python to the psp, including some standard modules. He also added a tutorial to it that is really good and explains a lot.

Also, his blog makes for some strange readings !

If only… I had more time. Like I used to have, back when I was 20+ and still living at home. Not now when I have two kids to take care of and a full life. I can look at this code, even install it on my psp maybe and test it, but I don’t have the urge to continue and develop stuff using it.

Gah. Guess my urge to program is over.

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Blog News

Joel on Software

I just added a new site to my ‘worthy site’ link list, Joelonsoftware.com. I had managed to find his site once before a year or more ago, but lost the link when I migrated to Apple hardware. I tend to like to start ‘fresh’ again, and only copy my most used stuff across.

Joel Spolsky is a programmer who knows how to write, and has kept a log of it for a long time now. His site has been made into two books. Lots of his articles on his site are very interesting and extremely well thought out.

So in my quest for quality blogs, this one had to be added to the list.

An entry that he made in 2001 is very pertinent to the situation in Europe now (and I guess everywhere else where outsourcing happens more and more).

Two yuppies in a living room buying an e-commerce engine from company A and selling merchandise made by company B and warehoused and shipped by company C, with customer service from company D, isn’t honestly adding much value. In fact, if you’ve ever had to outsource a critical business function, you realize that outsourcing is hell.

Also read the comments.

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Blog News Links PSP Websites Caught !

Some good PSP links

More a note to myself than anything else, this is a collection of some good psp links :

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Blog News

French Readers ?

It’s frrrrreezing cold outside. Time to hit the sack.

I just checked my stats, and noticed that someone is running google translate on some of my postings. I’ve got one or more french/francophone readers !

I have my suspicions, though…