bugmenot

Some news sources, like the new york times and sunday morning herald, have an annoying "feature" - they require the viewer to first register before allowing them to view the contents. Many other sites are guilty of the same, and bugmenot was setup so one doesn't have to lose one's privacy to these data sinks.

To aid in a better, faster, and more private surfing experience, there exists a bugmenot pluging for firefox, which will fill out any required forms with valid usernames and passwords contributed by its members.

Now thats what I call user friendly.

Cheers,
Steve

mChat - php chat room

M was stuck in a rather, for the lack of a better word, tightass network. So to facilitate communications, I wrote mChat in php. It grew from a simple (and rather smugly) script into one that supports avatars from atomicmpc with auto refresh, /me and user highlighting.

Try it out, there is almost always some one there. If you are interested it using the script on your site, just drop me a line.

Cheers,
Steve

emmap online store

I am selling some merchandise from the emmap project through cafepress. If you are looking for some unusual stuff, try them out :*) All of them contain maps of the world wide web in one form or another.

Cheers,
Steve

O Discordia

Its finally happening, the freedom of information (aka intellectual property) is restricted in this great country of ours (australia). Due to the FTA, copyright laws in Australia now lets some one other then the copyright holder to issue cease-and-decease orders to ISP in order to protect their "intellectual property".

Feck, and if that isn't bad enough, we are going to welcome the new year with the FTA coming into effect. Money over social morals once again.

In other news, if you ever have to deal with processing large number of files with Java, instead of using File.listFiles() iterating through the returned array, I strong recommend you implement FileFilter so that the processing is done with in, and use File.listFiles(FileFilter filter) instead. This gave significant speeds boosts to the post-processing tools used to produce the maps from the data set, also reduced the amount of required processing power.

Ocean's 12 by the by, is a good movie.

Cheers,
Steve

Addicted to computers

A lot of people accuse me of being addicted to computers: sitting in front of them all day long, tapping away at the keyboard, eyes burning with intensity normally associated with heroin addicts.

They make it sound like a bad thing, that some how I am wasting my life, not enjoying the "outdoors" enough. They think I am one of those information junkies, those bums of the net who do naught but browse, and browse, and browse.

Yet the same people look on with awe and praise at master painters who spent all day and night inside their studio, facing the same piece of canvas, brushes moving rapidly from pools of color to canvas and back in fluid practiced strokes whilst their eyes burn with an intensity similar to mine. Understand I do not compare myself to the likes of Da Vinci, I simply draw parallels between a candle's flame to that of a roaring bon fire.

I would like for my accusers to know that I am addicted not to computers but to one part of life. Imagine if you will being able to realise your dreams in an instant. The old peopled call it magic, and rightly so. Through programming we can offload our very thoughts into silicon, then preserve and distribute them to the world and ultimately when executed they become reality. This marvelous ability to encapsulate segments of our mind and share them so the world may see what we see in our mind's eye is simply magic. Building on other's ideas and thoughts we can create works of art that defies tradition, music that no instrument or vocal chord can produce, and even more astoundingly, add to other's ideas. Computers give us a collective mind of sorts, bringing together the brightest and best ideas so the pictures we see in darkness, music we hear in silence, insights we have in stillness can all be made real. To this tool I am addicted; to this task of turning dreams into the tangible I am addicted; to this one vital aspect of life, I am addicted.

Humanity has always sought the means through which its ideas can manifest themselves in reality, some mechanism to turn abstract thought into physical constructs. For aeons we utilised the arts: music, painting, writing and more. We gave vent to our imagination through what talents and tools we had, and those who were blessed rose to become giants immortalised in history. Now humanity has at its disposal technology to materialise its thoughts more then ever, and not only of a single gifted individual, but of all of humanity. Never in history have we been so saturated in magic.

Instead of pointing the finger, why not join us? Expand your mind and give birth to your imagination - become an addict today.