Wow, 2008 OS for Nokia 770!

The Nokia 770 was born with the 2005 OS. Then came the 2006 OS. Then came the Nokia n800 with its 2007 OS and soon, a 2007 OS Hacker Edition was released for the 770. Then n800 got a new OS, the 2008 one. Here's a picture. Nice, isn't it?

Okay, enough history, hot news coming: there is now a 2008 OS for the Nokia 770! That's like "hacker hacker edition". Announcement here.

Okay, looks cool, BUT:

Extra swap memory is required to get a decent performance, the device reboots from time to time... This release is definitely not recommended to end users and not even to users depending on this device alone. We are releasing it to show how far we have gone but for us this is a proof that the Hacker Edition has reached its limit.

Okay, I'm not reflashing. It's nice to see that the geeks made it work, but I need something stable at the moment. Right now, my rs-mmc card is screwed (the 1 GB one) and I have to use a 64 MB card, which doesn't even hold 10 mp3 files. Plus the browser crashes when I try to log in to the hotspot at school (how annoying!) and I don't know how to fix it without reflashing.

The 2007HE OS is slow enough as it is. I tried to post here from bed the other day. The browser had to be the only program running. The Opera browser couldn't handle the JS Blogger is based on. The Mozilla browser was slow as hell and when after 15 minutes a guest came over, I gave up. It really is pushing this hardware to the limits.

Someday, I'm gonna get a giant new card, install both 2006 OS and 2007HE OS, extend the swap to the card and everything is going to work so great...

Flag the bastard! (with cool Firefox add-ons)

I listed my blog on a few blog toplists and decided to see what other interesting blogs are there. One of these sites didn't have an "adults only" section and among the top blogs, many had inappropiate content. I decided to flag them a little bit. Now please don't give me the tolerance speech, flagging a blog doesn't send the authors straight down to hell, see here or here.

The rules are simple: bloggers are free to blog about what they want, readers are free to flag them. Cool. But one of the bloggers disabled the navbar. I'm pretty sure he didn't do it for estethical reasons, as he didn't care for a nice blog template. I felt my right to flag has been violated. I got angry. The dude had to get flagged. But how?

First thing to do, RTFM. A help group led me to The Real Blogger Status, who advised to make a bookmark to the URL "javascript:toggleFlag();". I was too lazy to make a bookmark and only copy-pasted the command in the navigation bar using that blog as a lab rat (intending to unflag it right away, of course). Failed. Still to lazy to make the bookmark and afraid the solution might be outdated, I decided to find my own way.

What is the navbar anyway? Normally speaking, the navigation bar at the top where you can search or flag the blog for example.
Geek speaking:

1. Click down here to activate Colorzilla.
2. Move the cursor here to find out what it is.
3. Get the answer from here: div#b-navbar. So it's called "navbar" and is placed in this div.

Okay, now to the bastard blog. In the Web Developer Toolbar, let's pick "CSS", then "Edit CSS".
What to we have here:

1. Inappropriate content (blurred, kids are reading).
2. No navbar to flag it!
3. A "navbar" iframe (I guess it's in the div mentionned above.) with the "display" property set to "none".

So what did I do?
1. Of course, changed the "display" property. Removing it didn't help, but setting it to "block" did.
2. Flagged the bastard!

I'm not saying it's the best or easiest way or anything. However, Colorzilla and Web Developer Toolbar are definitely cool to have.

Webdesign: wavy underlined links

When I first saw the wavy border in CSS3, I was really excited and couldn't wait. But, the same applied to rounded corners. A year later, still not much CSS3 support, and rounded corners are everywhere (even here! though I didn't make these myself). By the time most people will have browsers tha support CSS3, rounded corners will be totally out. So, I decided I wouldn't wait and do wavy underlined links right now.
I used this image as a background for my links and obtained the following effect on embrion.pl:
Today, I ran across LaurenConrad.com and noticed that the same idea has been used:
Very pretty. But I wonder if this effect was intented:
I don't think the images should be underlined. Seems like someone hasn't paid attention to classes. Worse yet, no contact with the webmaster (hello usability!) and the menu uses Flash. I don't approve of Flash at all, and if you're using it for stuff that could easily be done with CSS and JavaScript and only make the site a little less fancy for users with no JS, you're dead.
Anyway, I'm going from one subject to another again, Lauren's site looks good anyway, and I was talking about wavy underlined links and how much I like them and how they were my idea (do you think echomusic copied from me?).
I wonder what the next rounded corners will be.

Just a little security reminder

I hope most of you, dear readers, don't need to be reminded to double-check every e-mail that asks you to update your account information, especially from sites like eBay or PayPal. But I got a spoof today and I just wanna make fun of it.
Imagine that, from service@paypal.com:

Activate Your Account!
Update Your Information,
To complete your PayPal account, you must click the link below and enter your password on the following page to confirm your email address.

Plus such useful security tips:

Protect Your Account Info

Make sure you never provide your password to fraudulent websites. To safely and securely access the PayPal website or your account, open a new web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer or Netscape) and type in the PayPal URL (https://www.paypal.com/us/) to be sure you are on the real PayPal site. PayPal will never ask you to enter your password in an email. For more information on protecting yourself from fraud, please review our Security Tips at https://www.paypal.com/us/securitytips

Whoah. Too bad my e-mail account wasn't the PayPal one. And the links didn't lead to PayPal.com. And once it says to activate your account, and once to update your billing information. But, to wipe my tears, I just got another e-mail from the real PayPal:

Thanks for taking an active role by reporting suspicious-looking emails.
The email you forwarded to us is a phishing email, and our security team
is working to disable it.

So guys, be careful, we don't wanna end up like this guy from bash:

Ben174: fuckin paypal.. they need new databases or something.. seems like every other day i get an email and have to go update my account information.

[Source]

What geeks do according to xkcd

My bro sent me a link to xkcd yesterday. It's a great comic site and describes geeks really accurately.
First, what does xcfd mean?
1. My boyfriend did it a few days ago, but to the left.
2. I did it with my boyfriend a few days ago (the phone was next to his glasses). I did it with a friend recently... I don't think that's really geek though. Normal people do it too.
3. I'd never do that. That's sick.
4. I did that a lot when I was a kid. I've moved on to bigger and geekier things.
[Source]
Here are some social issues geeks face. Oh, how well I can relate!
[Source, source]
These illustrate the science obsession well. Really true.
Yep, I've caught myself thinking about math in romantic situations. That's why I only date geeks - then we can talk about it together. [Source]
Factoring time, I've never done it. But when you leave your coat at school, you can always hear a "Hey, mine's prime!". I always factor the number I get. [Source]
Geek on Wiki:
That's totally an everyday situation. [Source]
This one is really funny:
I've caught myself fantasising about SQL injection a lot recently. Too bad it's mean and illegal. [Source]

Other bloggers: "Young people who rock"

I ran across an awesome blog today: "Young people who rock". It's so inspirational! A girl (Jen MacNeil) who tries a new thing everyday for a year, teen AIDS activists, a 11-year-old fencing champ, a guy who went to Lebanon and Iran to interview Hezbollah members at McDonald's... WOW!
Not all stories inspire me equally, of course. For example, Isha Jain, a science geek:

In the fifth grade, she started a math camp. By sixth grade, Jain was breezing through college-level work and trigonometry classes. When she was in the eighth grade, she aced advanced calculus. Her taste for science started at 9 when she created a paradigm to explain the molecular structure of candy.

Great. Respect. But, does it inspire you? Most of us are not half that talented (I am definitely not), plus, you won't turn back time. But most of all, things you achieve at such a young age really depends on how your parents raise you, how your teachers support you and things of the kind. I was always told to have good grades and never learned for my own curiosity. Don't get me wrong, I've got loads of respect for Isha, but I'm just not inspired. I can't follow her example.
Brittany and Robbie Bergquist, however, inspire me a lot. They started a thing called "cell phones for soldiers". That's how it works:

People donate their old phones to the teens. They came up with the idea to sell them to a recycler for $5 and use the money to buy calling cards. Since they started three years ago, the pair has raised more than $1 million in donations and sent 400,000 minutes to troops. They hope to increase that amount nearly tenfold in the next five years so that more soldiers can call and say, "Hey, Mom."

That's my favourite kind of help: you start with few, people contribute few, but in the end you can give so much! Plus, the kids started it at 12 and 13, they just had an awesome idea! Anyone can do that! (Just find the good idea... think!)
A similar example: Rebecca Kousky, the founder of a non-profit organization called Nest that helps women all around the world create their own security.

Nest offers micro-finance loans to women from India to Israel. Female designers and artists worldwide come to Nest for small loans to help them with their businesses typically involving the fabrication and sale of goods like jewelry, pottery or clothes. In return for the loan, the artists have the option of paying back the loan in cash or with their product which is then featured on Nest's online shopping site, buildanest.com.

Again, you give few (50$), and someone gets so much!
Another one (man, they're all great!): Matthew and Emily Leinwand, two kids collecting crayons for kids in hospitals. If kids can help so much, co can we!

Major news: the new IE

A little quote from http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=367207:

The IE team has been very hard at work on IE 8 for the past several months and they hit a huge milestone last Friday evening. The IE dev team checked in a bunch of code that included several new features implemented in the core rendering engine that enable IE to pass the ACID 2 test! This is great news for web developers: IE 8 is going to be our most standards compliant browser to date.

Wow. Better late than never. However, I still am waiting for the days when us web develeopers won't have to work with N browsers open at once and do CSS hacks for IE6. It's not even that much fun, when you think you've got way more work to do just because someone screwed his part.