Happy World Firefox Day!

July 15 is World Firefox Day!



Are you a Friend of Firefox, too? =D

Cool Astroboy Jacket!

I was on my way to work sometime last week, and I was surprised when this popped in front of me:



Yes, you can really see Astroboy's insides. And it's not a plain print -- it's the kind where you get a different image when you shift your angle of view (paano ko nga ba dapat i-describe, ha? =p)!

(I searched for "astroboy jacket" and I found it here: AstroBoy 3D Hologram Jacket! =D)

YouTube Gripe

There is no immediately available RSS feed for my own favorites?! What the hey! My first idea was that it should be really simple and therefore it might just be a particular way of constructing a URL.

And in my searching, there are a lot of other users who are looking for this same feed. I found several solutions that go deep into parsing the XML result of a REST request using the YouTube Developer's API or *gasp* the actual My Favorites page!

Fortunately, I found a solution done using Yahoo! Pipes. I took a peek into how it was done. And it WAS simple!

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/users/<insert username>/favorites

Now I just have to test if it works on the PSP's RSS Channel! =D

(UPDATE 2008-03-10 7:52PM -- Awww, man! It's an Atom feed, not RSS!)

(UPDATE 2008-03-11 12:03AM -- Before Jaemark posted his FeedBurner comment, I was already playing with Yahoo! Pipes plus a bit more research.. aaand it seems that you just can't get video direct from YouTube onto the PSP.. there are a lot of PSP-compatible video sites, but YouTube still has the bulk of the videos worth sharing.. oh, well..)

CAPTCHA Is Broken?

Says this article: CAPTCHA is Dead, Long Live CAPTCHA!

The most reliable CAPTCHA implementations were announce to have been defeated.

I don't know much about CAPTCHA, but couldn't they somehow mimic the "salting" done in password hashing? Maybe split the CAPTCHA images into random partitions: "gh9p3845" for example could be posted as two images with "gh9" and "p3845", or maybe even 4 partitions with "gh" + "9" + "p38" + "45" or, better yet, one image per letter -- what's important is the partitioning being random.

The article suggests "Distinguish pictures of dogs from cats". Since this might boil down to a somewhat a multiple choice question, bot could possibly get lucky. I'm thinking we could extend the salting to use a picture: CAPTCHA phrase "lk2s" + dog picture + some instructions that it should be typed as "lkDOG2s"..

Dunno..

Considering

After Mark told me about the news that Apple is releasing the iPhone SDK (and me looking around for smartphones), I am sooo tempted to get an iPhone for myself.. next year. =p

Geeeek

• http://www.nuklearpower.com/daily.php?date=070707 -- I've forgotten about sharing this last month: Here's what Brian Clevinger's says about the new Transformers movie:
  

  So the new Transformers movie is better than it had any reason to be. Sure, there were plot holes big enough for Optimus to drive through, but when your premise begins with the phrase, "There's an interplanetary civil war between an alien race of super robots," you kind of go with it.
  
  My one complaint is that the movie lacked the phrase "Decepticreeps." And, similarly, though Ironside stole every scene where he spoke, the noted absense of his rallying cry -- "...bust some Deceptichops" -- did not go unnoticed. But, hey, that's why they make sequels.

  
  


• http://www.nuklearpower.com/daily.php?date=070801 -- On Civ IV.. =p


• http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game_andrew.shtml -- Online version of the text-based adventure game, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy


• http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a127/ironicpseudonym/Amastersguide.jpg -- Drawing: A Master's Guide ------ reminds me of Ed and his uber pixel art! =D


• http://www.neatorama.com/2007/07/24/pug-vader/ -- Pug Vader


• http://www.instructables.com/id/EUS0W80F2XW9PF4/ -- How to make a Green Lantern ring- including a glowing version!


• http://catb.org/esr/jargon/html/magic-story.html -- A Story About 'Magic'


• http://catb.org/esr/jargon/html/koans.html -- Some A.I. Koans


• http://cre.ations.net/creation/webvnc---remote-desktop--vnc-on-your-iphone -- WebVNC - Remote Desktop / VNC on your iPhone


• http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/%7Ewwu/1337/code.shtml -- 1337 code


• http://arbroath.blogspot.com/2007/07/meet-david-bowies-of-dog-world.html -- Meet the David Bowies of the dog world


• http://flickrfy.com/blog/2007/07/24/batman-on-a-budget/ -- Batman on a Budget

Railgun Demo!

Awesome!

A missile punch at bullet prices (http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2007/012007/01172007/251373/index_html?page=1)

...

On second thought, it's not that awesome..

Transformers Post

Well, I have yet to watch the new Transformers movie, so I had to quell the (surprisingly faint) fanboy urges in me by settling with the following online videos:

Costumes Transformers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akNJ6S2UqsE)

I already posted a (different) link to this video before, but this had to belong to a dedicated Transformers post. These are the BEST and COOLEST Transformers I have ever seen! It really looked like they took their time designing them, except for the first one -- and Starscream -- errr, maybe just Optimus Prime. I was surprised when I saw the transformation: the front of the legs unfolded forward, the torso also folded out! the arms locked into place at his side -- and he rolled! I silently chuckled in admiration when he had to shrug his shoulders to set his arms loose. =)

Real Transformer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STQ3nhXuuEM)

A video of a remote-controlled car which suddenly opens up and transforms into a two-legged humanoid robot that walks! And it can transform back into a car, too!

Robo-One 9: Robot Competition - LAYERED-X (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0m_cCP1wn94)

Its description reads:

One of the most surprising robots that appeared at the 9th Robo-One competition held here in Tokyo on March 18-19th, 2006, was LAYERED-X developed by Asurada. Its unique design allows it to reconfigure and transform itself into some amazing shapes. At first it looks like a short tower, then becomes a carousel, then a walking spider, then into a tall biped battle robot. It can even transform an arm into a new leg and keep on fighting. Really amazing. For the latest robot news, information, hacks, photos, and videos with special on-site coverage from Japan, see Robots Dreams at http://www.robots-dreams.com

Japanese ingenuity.

Robot Chicken Clip - Optimus Prime gets Prostate Cancer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWYOQoui6Ks)

I've watched a couple of other Robot Chicken episodes, and it's actually cool!

The Rude Awakening of Optimus Prime (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq1_6D9QS9Y)

Description:

Optimus Prime is brought back to life in the year 2006 to find that many things have changed since his death.

Totally hilarious mutilation and re-dub of the Generation-2 episode where Optimus Prime was resurrected.

Link Spam!

Transformers - Then & Now (http://www.revproject.com/transformers/default.html)

Chuck Norris - Google Search (http://clients.arranschlosberg.com/chuck/index.htm)

Pepsi Ice Cucumber (http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/news-14109-Pepsi+ICE+CUCUMBER%E2%80%A6+they+did+it%21.html)

Nintendo Jewelry (http://thirdproject.net/shineys.html)

Science's 10 Most Beautiful Physics Experiments (http://physics-animations.com/Physics/English/top_ref.htm)

http://www.barrettcustomknives.com/japanese_swords

Ten Reasons Why Mandarin Chinese Will Kick Your Ass (http://shanghaied.vox.com/library/post/ten-reasons-why-mandarin-chinese-will-kick-your-ass.html)

Am I Too Old?

Am I already washed-up as a developer?

I had almost the entire day to spend on my PC.

I played with Ubuntu a bit. I finally got WarCraft 3 to work fine with Wine. Before, it didn't render well, and was very slow. It turned out that 3D acceleration wasn't turned on. I don't know why I thought that it would be enabled by default. Now I know what to do at the newly set-up Linux box at the office. =p

For most of the day, I decided to actually do something productive with my PC. I wanted a PC at home primarily because I wanted to have free PC time to learn new stuff as a developer and maybe do a project on the side, if I feel like it. However, since I bought the PC, all I did with it was read comics and manga, watch stuff, play and chat. I didn't even get back to blogging regularly.

So, I started with reading about the very popular Spring Framework. I have already been introduced to its core concepts, and I can pretty much describe what it can do. However, what I knew was very shallow. I wouldn't be able to visualize a project using it, much less build one. Right now, I'm still at the level of introductions to its core components. I have four pieces of reading material open, since whenever I get stuck in a paragraph, I look for another article which I hope would be simpler to read -- but, alas, I would get stuck in a paragraph as well.

It's getting frustrating, because I don't think the problem is about Spring, but instead about me learning new technical stuff.

But, for now..

Why can't I think in Spring??

Da Best

I was looking around for reviews of free anti-virus software, and I stumbled on this thread which, I guess, was right on:


:p

Gosh-Darned Coolness

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us