Recent Posts

1276

Developer's Corner / CSS Tweaker for helping to clean up CSS files

« Last post by housetier on March 23, 2006, 10:54 AM »

Where is it?

You go here.

What is it?

It is a free service which takes a .css file and attempts to optimize it. The resulting .css is usually much smaller and less redundant (I believe). However, all the definitions are on one line so it will be difficult to edit it afterward.

You should try and see or yourself. I am sure it will be impoved in the future. I bookmarked it already.

1277

General Software Discussion / Re: Gabbly!

« Last post by housetier on March 20, 2006, 03:07 PM »

an applet is too heavy. I was thinking about a irc-bound shout box or so

I might code it myself[1]; I know its technically possible.

[1] this will take time, much time, a LONG time

1278

General Software Discussion / Re: Gabbly!

« Last post by housetier on March 20, 2006, 12:54 PM »

and now it only needs to be integrated with irc and I could use it on my site...

1279

Living Room / Re: Spore spurred your thoughts? Have a look at Apple's multi touch screen movie!

« Last post by housetier on March 20, 2006, 12:53 PM »

that interface is absolutely awesome! I lack the words to describe it properly.

You touch it and something colorful happens - I mean WOW!!!! I want this in my home, and do stuff with it. Don't know exactly what, but I want it anyway.

1280

General Software Discussion / Windows XP boots on Macbook Pro

« Last post by housetier on March 10, 2006, 10:30 AM »

My roomate sent me this, I couldn't believe it at first. But there you have it: actual proof!

XP boots on mac

1281

Official Announcements / Re: Cody's Excellent Vacation CodyCard Contest Ended Feb28 - Winners Inside

« Last post by housetier on March 03, 2006, 02:55 PM »

Cody is cute!

1282

Living Room / Re: nutrasweet and diet soda a neurotoxin - new study and article

« Last post by housetier on March 02, 2006, 05:34 AM »

I'd say that's the habitual part of the brain sending strong signals.

1283

Living Room / Re: nutrasweet and diet soda a neurotoxin - new study and article

« Last post by housetier on March 02, 2006, 05:13 AM »

I eat want I want to eat.

If you "listen" to your body, it will tell you what it needs. That's what we have appetite for. On rare occasions I ind myself picturing pineapples or bananas; there is something in these fruits my body cannot get elsewhere. Same happens with eggs: every once in a while I fix myself a rather large serving of scrambled eggs (with all kids of yummy seasoning and addons and...). After eating that I feel very fine again.

I had to train myself to listen to my body more. Most people mistake hunger for thirst; while there are fluids in most foods and the feeling goes away ater having eaten something, a cup/glass of <your favorite liquid> would have helped also and reduced calory intake at the same time. (wow complicated sentence, I hope I correctly came out of that mess) People can learn to only eat what they need and want, and not what they are used to. Basically I want to encourage people to eat anything and everything they want, as long as they make a concious decision and then enjoy it.

Eating is fun, you should enjoy it. It is not about guilt, about feeling bad afterwards. Media coverage in the past has been vey confusing, even contradicting:

...I just don't know who to listen to anymore.

It's time to go back to enjoying food and eating, not thinking about all the (bad) consequences but to make a conscious decision: "I want to eat that and I want to enjoy it." Once you get to that point, your life will have become easier; you will less to worry about.

I hope I could make my points clear...

1284

Living Room / Re: Coffee vs. Tea

« Last post by housetier on March 02, 2006, 04:57 AM »

I was in Southern India a few years ago where I was served Hot Coffee w/ Sweetened Condensed milk.  It was YUM!
 

-Rover (February 16, 2006, 03:54 PM)

A couple of my friends where in Vietnam last year (and this year I *just* recalled) and tried this extra-strong coffee with sweet condensed milk. They were so exalted, when they came back to .de they bought the necessary utensils to make it themselves.

I also tried it and while I think its not the worst coffee I ever had I also think that tea preparations are much simpler. I am a tea drinker by heart and by heritage. As long as I can remember I have been drinking tea, and all my family does too. Of course we have coffee drinkers as well, but no matter whom of my family I visit, there will be tea to enjoy

1285

Living Room / Re: The IT Crowd

« Last post by housetier on March 02, 2006, 04:52 AM »

episode 5 is out btw...

1286

Living Room / Re: caffeine free week - who wants to join me?

« Last post by housetier on March 02, 2006, 04:50 AM »

Caffeine free is good. I've been living on theine for a long time, so I don't have a problem with that

1287

Living Room / Re: vmware's new contest to build a virtual appliance

« Last post by housetier on March 02, 2006, 04:46 AM »

Shortly before reading this:

so as an example, you might make a vmware player that has linux and a web browser installed and preconfigured to launch on boot and display the donationcoder.com homepage.  now you have made a "virtual appliance" whose sole purpose is to safely surf to the dc site, and is only 300mb big.  not sure if this would win the prize..

-mouser (February 28, 2006, 09:52 AM)

I saw this at vmware.com:

Virtual Appliance

The Browser Appliance allows users to securely browse the Internet using Mozilla Firefox. Run the Browser Appliance with VMware Player to:

• Protect Against Adware and Spyware: Users protect their PCs against adware, spyware and other malware while browsing the Internet with Firefox in a virtual machine. The Browser Appliance leverages virtual machine isolation capabilities to prevent malware downloaded in the browser from propagating to the normal desktop.
• Safeguard Personal Information: The Browser Appliance can be configured to automatically reset itself after each use so personal information is never stored permanently.

It would seem this idea was rather popular. I stumbeled upon it in this Groklaw story, more precisely in this comment.

1288

Living Room / Scariest Thing I Saw This Year

« Last post by housetier on March 02, 2006, 04:34 AM »

Where did it come from?

That I do not know; a friend sent me the URL in an Email.

Where don't I want to go today?

Don't go here! It is rather disturbing if not frightening. Under no circumstances click if you have a bad day!

I clicked, what should I do now?

Call your family and tell them you love them; then find a local CCC-Representative and ask for help on this matter. If you can't find someone from the CCC, a related organization will do fine.

I urge you to consider this, and take appropriate steps to protect yourself. Even more so if you live in a country of the EU...

 

1289

Living Room / Re: Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music v2

« Last post by housetier on March 02, 2006, 04:26 AM »

and if you want to bash on the trance lovers ("P.L.U.R." et al) you might find this trancecracker page entertaining. If you happen to like trance you might find it offensive.

I found it hilarious! 

1290

General Review Discussion / Re: Vote for what Review to do Next

« Last post by housetier on March 01, 2006, 10:28 AM »

EU administration (can't say which party really) decided every citizen is suspicious of being a terrorist so they have to keep track of all their communications. I do not like this; I especially despise our German Minister of Justice for speaking with two tongues, but that's another story.

I now feel the need to protect myself, to make it very very difficult for the authorities to gather coherent/useful/revealing/telltale/thatsortofthing data about me and my friends&family. First thing that comes to mind is strong email encryption. I know there is GPG/PGP; what I am looking for now is an really easy way for the average (windows) PC user to use this.

Another thing I am iterested in for personal reasons are kid's programs. My little brother is growing up so fast and I want him to have a better "PC experience" throuhg programs for kids. So I am really looking forward to see reviews about this too.

K, I cast my votes, I added my two cents.

PS: in case someone asks "what's so great about donationcoder.com?" you tell them "housetier said it rocks, so it must be true"

1291

Developer's Corner / Re: Source code colors: Contrast / Readability / Ergonomics

« Last post by housetier on February 21, 2006, 09:50 AM »

Stop This Madness!

Well I couldn't resist and randomly downloaded a few more definitions of color schemes. This page is getting rather heavy, traffic-wise...

This time I bore you with:

* delphi
* yeller
* zenburn
* slateBW, note the change on the status line

1292

Developer's Corner / Re: Source code colors: Contrast / Readability / Ergonomics

« Last post by housetier on February 20, 2006, 11:58 AM »

maybe we need a script that gradually changes your color scheme based on time of day, from light to dark - that would be cool

-mouser (February 20, 2006, 11:50 AM)

In vim this is possible of course (of course!), since you can control a vim instance remotely. So one could write a little script that determines the color scheme based on time and then sends a remote command to a running vim instance, telling it to switch to the given color scheme.

And while we are talking about how great opensource software is: those screenshots I created with The Gimp ;-) However, I'd love to see samples of such color schemes in other editors too. I know I am the self-proclaimed opensource zealot but I'd like to widen my horizon...

1293

Developer's Corner / Re: Source code colors: Contrast / Readability / Ergonomics

« Last post by housetier on February 20, 2006, 11:40 AM »

enough already, we get the point!

In the last of today's episode of "post an image" I proudly present:
* shine
* sift
* slate
* torte
* watermark
* zellner

1294

Developer's Corner / Re: Source code colors: Contrast / Readability / Ergonomics

« Last post by housetier on February 20, 2006, 11:37 AM »

even more, even more, even more!

And the saga continues. This time we have:
* desert
* elflord
* evening
* koehler
* morning
* murphy
* pablo
* peachpuff
* ron

Yes this time we have nine attachments because I couldn't make my browser delete the contents of the last input field...

1295

Developer's Corner / Re: Source code colors: Contrast / Readability / Ergonomics

« Last post by housetier on February 20, 2006, 11:30 AM »

more, more, more!

Ok, ok! By popular request I created some more screenshots of the color schemes I have right now. Note that these are not alle the schemes that are available, these are just the ones I happened to have installed.


Attached here are:
* anotherdark
* baycombG, a variation of baycomb above
* blue
* darkblue
* default
* delek
* desertedocean

1296

Developer's Corner / Re: Source code colors: Contrast / Readability / Ergonomics

« Last post by housetier on February 19, 2006, 10:00 AM »

I like dark

But it's also "quiet"; that is, there aren't many different colored used. In German colors can be loud and quiet, even excited. Baycomb is still being fine-tuned by its author, but so far I found it usable.

There are too many color schemes available for vim. I believe other programmer's editors will have a wide variety of such schemes as well; I know emacs does.

1297

General Software Discussion / Re: Need fresh ideas and a name please people!

« Last post by housetier on February 19, 2006, 08:06 AM »

Name
I propose the name "Gelb".

Reasoning
We all know the standard device for note keeping: Post-its! They come in various colors, but everybody knows a Post-It is yellow. Yellow is also a common theme among the note keepers I tried so far.

"Gelb" is German for yellow and adds a nice exotic touch. Everybody in their hearts loves us Germans; and we love you too!

1298

General Software Discussion / Re: big freeware alternatives list

« Last post by housetier on February 19, 2006, 07:52 AM »

Some of these many many programs might be on the Opensource CD. It's for giving to all those poor souls having trouble with their payware.

1299

General Software Discussion / Re: utorrent and azureus high cpu activity

« Last post by housetier on February 19, 2006, 07:48 AM »

If you restrict the number of connections azureus opens it will use less CPU time. There are other ressource-optimizations you can undertake, they are laid out on Azureus website. But it does use some amount of memory...

1300

Developer's Corner / Re: Is customization worth it?

« Last post by housetier on February 19, 2006, 06:46 AM »

nice and shiny, colorful and flashy does not mean the user is unproductive. for some people minimalism and productivity are the same, for others they are not.

I think the users are most productive in the environment they created for themselves. sure, they might be not as fast as possible, but would they really *enjoy* "running at maximum rpm" in such a productivistic environment?

I spent a lot of time customizing my desktop: I have to find the right tools for a given task and have to get used to them; sometimes they have bugs so I need to choose something else which needs getting used to; my work environment changes so I might need a different desktop theme because the old LCD just doesnt cut it anymore with the old theme... So I spend time tweaking here and there, customizing this and that. Some people customize themselves to the working environment. I cannot say which way "better"; people are people, and people are different. Each person has his/her own unique way of dealing with the surroundings.

It's getting kinda metaphorical towards the end but I hope to have made my point.