Pekka Sandborg - Ragdoll
I have stared at this for waaaay too long now.. Remember that you can drag her around the screen too.
This ragdoll-physics experiment is based on Jacobsen article. This is easier to do than it looks.
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July 29, 2005
July 26, 2005
Video of completing Mario 64 in < 20 mins.
Just found this site with an awesome video of a guy finishing Mario 64 in under 20 mins.
http://www.spikedhumor.com/Article.aspx?id=238
(via Digg.com http://digg.com/gaming/The_20_minute_Mario_Bros_64)
Also on the digg site is links to finishing Mario on the NES in < 11 mins.
Now playing: Adam Curry - Daily Source Code for July 25th 2005 #213
Anything But iPod - MobiBLU DAH-1500 Review
Look at this cool tiny mp3 player.
Anything But iPod - MobiBLU DAH-1500 Review
The player comes in a tiny cubic package measuring 24 x 24 x 24 millimeters and weighs 18 grams or just under one square inch and about 0.64 ounces. (…or four sugar cubes and five eights, for the stoners) The player has an FM radio and supports MP3 and WMA files. The MobiBLU DAH-1500 comes with a USB connection cable, headphone necklace, program CD, user guide, and protective case. The storage sizes available for the decice 512MB and 1GB.
July 25, 2005
Keyboard with OLED keys
How cool is this keyboard!!! Each of the keys is an individual OLED display that is configurable to show different images based on different configurations. Check out the site for more images.
http://artlebedev.com/portfolio/optimus/
Now playing: digg.com - Episode #003 Audio
News: Yahoo! acquires Konfabulator
The Konfabulator widgets are something that I’ve played with a while ago, and really looked at building a couple, but got caught with having to pay for the runtime to run them. Now Yahoo! is looking at releasing it for free, it may be a more attractive platform.
Macworld: News: Yahoo! acquires Konfabulator
Yahoo! Inc. on Monday will announce the acquisition of Konfabulator, a Macintosh and Windows application that allows users to run mini files known as Widgets on their desktop -- the same model used by Apple for its Dashboard application. Yahoo! company executives said they would also be giving Konfabulator away for free, completely doing away with the US$19.95 currently charged for the product.
Tags: Yahoo Javascript
Upgrading server
I’ve just got a new set of HDD for the server at home, so I'm going to rebuild it using these drives. There's heaps of crap on the old one, so I'm going to re-install each thing needed leaving out the ones that arnt.
Now its time to hunt how to migrate some of the apps, the first on is this blog. It seems the following is helpful.
http://www.elise.com/mt/archives/000587backing_up_your_blog.php
Crazy Frog
Just like the Hamster dance, or the Subservient Chicken, the crazy frog has crossed the media divide, spanning mobile phones, music, video and now u can see him in all his glory online.
By taking a well known tune like Axel F and adding his own Ding Ding Boom to it, he has created one of the most distinctive and recognisable tunes. That said, it does get very annoying.
http://www.killsometime.com/Video/video.asp?video=Crazy-Frog
Tags: Crazy Frog Annoying
July 24, 2005
Leading Lung Specialist Endorses Picking Your Nose and Consuming What You Find
Ok so its a bit gross, but make up your own mind.
Check out the full article for more information.
"With the finger you can get to places you just can't reach with a handkerchief, keeping your nose far cleaner,” says Dr. Bishinger. "And eating the dry remains of what you pull out is a great way of strengthening the body's immune system.
Cold Saturday Morning Ride
Sharkey organised an early morning ride on Saturday morning, I had great hopes that we would be heading on our Springvale Rd, Eltham, Bourke Rd trip, but was informed that Katherine didn’t want to do roads as she has a new bike with clip in pedals and is having issues getting her feet out of them.
So the plan was to head off from my place at about 8:30, but as usual Katherine was late and so we eventually left just before 9:00. BRRRR.. It was cold.
There was a chance of rain so for the first time EVER I decided to head out with a jacked on. I know, a bit of a woos. But it was the best decision I made.
We headed off and met Katherine down the road, then went out along the eastern all the way along to the Chandler Hwy then over the hill to the Fairfield boat house for a quick drink then the return trip.
We ended up out of the rain, missed it by an hour or so, but still had the cold. All in all a great ride.
Nearly forgot, that on the way back past the Elgar park football ground, I saw that my brothers footy team (the Eley Park Sharks) were playing, so left Sharkey and Katherine to head home while I hung around to watch Mark play the 1st quarter. They dominated the first quarter being 7–3 to 0–1 at quarter time.
It was a bit cold, and if I hung around much longer the body probably would have seized up, so I trundled off home to have a shower and got back to the game in time to see the 3rd and 4th quarters. By this time the Sharks had really extended their lead, and eventually ran out winners by about 20 goals. That 120 points for the readers out there that don’t know the AFL scoring system. (An utter flogging)
So it was a good ride, that totalled about 38k’s, a good win for my brothers team and a good excuse to blog.
Tags: cycling cold morning boat house afl
Now playing: Adam Curry - Daily Source Code for July 19th 2005 #211
July 18, 2005
Tom Riddles Diary (via AJAX)
A very cool page I just stumbled upon (via the AJAXIAN blog) is a site that simulates Tom Riddles Diary.
For those who aren't Harry Potter fans, Tom Riddles Diary contained a copy of Tom Riddle and would talk to people via them writing in the diary. This website works in much the same way, you enter text onto the page and Tom answers the questions. It works all in realtime using ajax technologies.
Pretty cool.
Check it out at:
http://pandorabots.com/pandora/talk?botid=c96f911b3e35f9e1
I asked it questions about how it works, and what it is. It answers the questions well. Even things like what it the capital city of …. seems to work. But I did stump it with the Atomic Weight of Gold… I guess not everything can know everything.
Play and feel free to comment here on any interesting questions to ask.
Now playing: steve@gillmor.com - Gillmor Gang Goes East
Tags: HarryPotter ajax
iTunes 4.9 and Podcasting
I’d assume that everyone who's been listening to podcasts has now heard of the changes in iTunes to support Podcasting. It will also be no surprise to anyone to know some of the limitations that iTunes has in its current implementation.
I’ve read (and heard) some of the criticisms on behalf of the actual podcaster, and as I don’t run one I’ll leave that discussion to them, but what I want to talk about is iTunes 4.9 and the experience as a listener.
Let me get a few things out to start with. I’m a Windows laptop user, who doesn’t own an iPod (but would love one) so I use iTunes not only to manage and download the episodes, but also to listen.
Before iTunes podcasting support, I couldn’t find a podcatcher that suited my needs, I wanted one that did the following:
- Allow simple addition of new podcasts
- Allow me to browse a central repository of podcasts
- Download new casts as they come available
- Automatically remove old casts
- Allow me to play the cast directly
- Manage the number of times played
- Keep a track of if I had completely played a cast
- Allow me to resume listening to a cast from the last place I stopped it
- Allow different podcasts to have different rules for downloading
- Allow me to mark an episode as great so it can be kept
- Allow me to share an episode with other uses of the same product
There are probably a few more, but thats the main thing. Manage the subscriptions and the major bit was to allow me to play the item from within the application. It could then manage what/when I played stuff and not delete items that were not played, or take other actions (like not download new episodes until the last one was listened to).
So what does this have to do with iTunes 4.9? Well it seems that Apple have read my mind and implemented a lot of the features. They already had iTunes, that supported MP3 playback, and with the addition of the podcasting client you can now manage subscriptions and download episodes.
But that seems to be the end of it. There is no way to use the inbuilt sharing in iTunes to share your podcasts. How much better would it be if I could see what others on my network listen to, subscribe from their system and take their copy of the episodes. I’m sure the podcasters would love it.. New subscribers, but not having to spend the bandwidth sending me the file.
The other thing I don’t like, is that when I play one show, it stops at the end of it. I know I can probably add it to my party shuffle, but why can’t it just continue playing like it does in the library??
I assume that they just got it working and out the door, so I’ll hold of ranting much more about this, as apple have been innovative in this field before, but if I can ask for one thing, thats Please don’t forget the people without iPods.. Make iTunes capable of doing all the same stuff that the iPod can so I can use my laptop as my psudo-iPod.
Tags: itunes podcasting podcast podcatcher audio
July 16, 2005
Jells Park ride
Just finished a ride to Jells Park and back, it was a pretty good ride there, seemed like we were flying and we made good time, but it was when we turned around to come back that we realised why. A serious tail wind, which now was a serious head wind.
That said, we pushed pretty well through it and made good time doing the 36 odd K’s in just under 2 hours, which is a good effort for us, especially in the cold of winter that we have.
Tags: Cycling Jells Park Sharkey
Now playing: Black Eyed Peas - Don't Phunk With My Heart
July 14, 2005
Searching for a good Parma?
Chicken Parma ratings online
http://www.superparma.com/
say no more….
supplied by Nick
Now playing: Adam Curry - Daily Source Code for July 13th 2005 #207
Online newspaper reader (AJAX)
We all know that most newspapers have an online presence, but its limited to what they decide to publish and its not like the real thing.
But now due to the wonders of the internet you can read the paper in its original format, scanned and digitised for your viewing pleasure.
http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx
What's more, is that its a funky site using heaps of AJAX technology and showing us that someone else than Google can really use this technology to make some cool stuff.
Now playing: Green Day - Homecoming
July 12, 2005
OpenJMS
We have been using OpenJMS for a fair while around here for some development stuff. I recently went back to check for an update, as we were running 0.7.6 and I thought that there might a 1.0 or even an minor update.
Upon heading over to the site I found a new release 0.7.7–alpha1. Now I'm a casual user of alpha’s, but for something as critical as our JMS component i would not usually use an alpha, but if u head over to the site and have a look at the downloads page it would seem that this is the only release, and not only that but it portrays to be the stable release.
That said, I DO know it a sourceforge project, and I DO know that I can access the downloads list and grab the most recent stable release, but for others just stumbling along they would read this to be either a new project still in alpha, or not see the alpha and consider it as stable.
After all of that ranting, we are using it, and apart from some headaches of migrating from 0.7.6 it seems to be working fine. Or at least fine enough for development.
So now this rant is over, it must be time to get back and post some questions/issues to the OpenJMS mailing list.