Month: June 2005

here are my ordered free Ubuntu Linux CDs. I am thrilled that they really arrived! 🙂

They came from Belgium! Great service! 🙂

Technorati Tags: Ubuntu, Linux

When I have logged in to Flickr today, they displayed this news!:

Flickr News
DEV CHANGE LOG

22 Jun ’05, 9.38pm CEST
Users of Opera 8.01 now should be able to partake of all the DHTML interface niceties that were previously only available to Safari, IE, and Mozilla-based browser users. Oh, joy!

So, now Flickr officially supports Opera! Groovy! 😀
Well, I have been using Flickr in past too, never had problems, so wonder how it improved for Opera users, but at least it works now officially. 🙂 thanks to the Flickr Team to offically support Opera now 🙂

Technorati Tags: Opera, Flickr

And again one of my friends told me about an amazing silly site. And the sad thing is: Those people are totally serious!

STOP ALIEN ABDUCTIONS
No, it’s not only the homepage bad as it seems, no it’s also the idea. Protect yourself from mind controls from aliens by wearing foil helmes

And the shocking thing! They even offer it for kids!

How silly! And that really scares me, I mean, ok, if you want to be a nerd and wear such helmes, ok but don’t drag your kids into it! That is my opinion. well, the world is silly and we life among them. heheh.

Technorati Tags: Alien Abduction, aliens

Bad news! The GMail Invite Spooler is unfortunately down 🙁

From their homepage:

I have gotten the word from Gmail’s Product Manager that my service is no longer tolerable. At midnight PDT June 7th, 2005, this service was disabled. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to all who contributed to this service. Your generosity helped out a vast number of people and for that you should be proud.

The gmail spooler email account is now deactivated and any mail sent to it will bounce. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to drop me a line: email@isnoop.net

Luckily there are kind people like me! 😀 So you can still get a free GMail Invitation from me! 🙂

Technorati Tags: Gmail Invitation Spooler, GMail invitation

UPDATE: There is a new version out which fixes the unicode problem. info and download link here

Yet it doesn’t work for 2001-2003 for me yet 🙁
but he is working on that now
==========

As many of you sure know, ICQ 5 does unfortunately not have a Message History search function 🙁

Now a clever user created his own history search prg!

However yet it doesn’t seem to work right in all cases. It skips to convert histories with UNICode and then the whole prg terminates so you cannot convert the others after:

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

F:Dokumente und EinstellungenNafcom>cd F:Dokumente und EinstellungenNafcomD
esktoplinkfoldericq5webhist 1.0

F:Dokumente und EinstellungenNafcomDesktoplinkfoldericq5webhist 1.0>icq5web
hist.exe
##################################
# ICQ5 Web History Generator
# Developer: David Lee
# ICQ #4005491
# Ver: 1.0
##################################

Reading data from 332545368-0105.xml

not well-formed (invalid token) at line 7, column 7, byte 119 at lib/XML/Parser.
pm line 187

F:Dokumente und EinstellungenNafcomDesktoplinkfoldericq5webhist 1.0>

332545368 is from a spammer, not a contact from me.
His prg seems to have problem with UNICode:

0x0014001f

0
Yes
1107082560
UNICode message

Anyway, it’s cool! It’s the first right step into a history search which was long missed in ICQ5!

Manual and download link can be found, here

Technorati Tags: ICQ, history search

This blog entry is written as a continue of my blog entry “Weird Computer Errors“.

I had some spare money since months and I had no idea what to buy for it!
So I decided to buy toy hardware for my PC. What is Toy Hardware? (from now on called “TH”). TH is TH that you do not need really but you have it because it’s either:

1) Funny TH
2) Weird TH
3) Ridiclious TH (which I find a waste of money, so I do not have “RTH”)
4) TH which makes live easier.

So I have decided to go for:

a) A bluetooth USB stick (means it gives your PC bluetooth ability by plugging it into an USB port).
b) An external USB 2.0 case for 3.5″ IDE HDDs
c) A gameport/midiport (i.e. joystick port) to USB adapter

Why did I buy those?

a) I do not have an idea yet what to do with that one, but Christmas is soon 😉
And my “new motherboard” I have decided to go for, doesn’t have on-board bluetooth!

c) Because the new motherboard’s on-board sound chip won’t have a midiport and I love my QJ PC-Optix SV-205 with analog-digital combi technology!

b) Because a friend and IT expert has external HDDs and he was praising them very often 🙂

There have been so many crazy and interesting experiences with those 3 hardware bits, that I feel the need to write it here on my blog!

The joystick: It really works better now! Why you ask? Because it has switch-off-able throttle, and if I configured it as a flight stick (what it indeed it is!) and the throttle is switched off, the joystick won’t work (error message: “Device Not Connected!”), which makes you mad if you play a game and by accident move the throttle too much!

Thanks to the Rockfire USB-Nest Joystick Converter, the joystick now works as a flight stick (USB-Nest has 4 joystick modes you can select from, I have selected 1-2 axes, 4 buttons (Mode 3)) and I can switch off the throttle if I want, and the joystick will still operate as it should! 😎

The HDD: It can be set as boot device in BIOS settings of MSI 🙂 I have a HDD case with SILicon controller:

in my eyes: good bios support, when I once had a support question, I have got a nice answer, they are not as expensive as Promise controllers but not neccessarily worse than SIL. And Linux has a very good support of SIL controllers!

I have also mentioned earlier that I am using Mandriva Linux (Limited Edition 2005).
And so I was thrilled wether my new hardware would be supported eventhough it’s not listed in the Mandriva Hardware Database!

The USB-Nest Joystick Converter was detected but not supported by HardDrake

The USB 2.0 hdd case was deteced properly and works 🙂

And to my suprise, when I have plugged in the FreeControl Bluetooth mini-USB Adapter HardDrake told me: “Have to install gnome-bluetooth. YES/NO?”. Of course I said YES and there I went! 🙂 It installed it as “pegasus bluetooth”, well whatever works, right? 😀

There is a funny thing, though! You _must not_ boot up Mandriva Linux with the bluetooth adapter plugged in. If you do it though, one of the following things will happen:

1) Either it mis-detects it as USB printer and then Linux freezes (no error message)
2) Or it says on startup of a GUI “Server Not Found” and “No supported bluetooth device found”

So it only works correctly if you plug it in just when your GUI fully booted up! Then Linux will say “Bluetooth device found”

That’s it with my experiences so far 🙂

Technorati Tags: hardware detection, bluetooth, USB, Mandriva

There is a message going around in German ICQ 5 clients about “icq is no longer for free”. Of course this is not true and spam! I found a rather good translation of this post and a statement about this from an ICQ user,
here which I would like to quote:

“i get this nice message:

It’s a pity that the ICQ-administration had to start a second chain letter, because the first one wasn’t taken seriously. Send this message to every person in your Contactlist back to me . We feel impelled to this, because there are very much inactive accounts, causing long loadingtimes. As a reward you will get a golden icq-flower. Proofs can be found under icq.com

In my opnion thats just another stupid chain letter with orgin: some stupid teens that wanna laugh up there sleeves, seeing there “friends” spread this crap.

I’m of that opion because:
1. I havn’t found any proof on icq.com
2. This letter (and the letter from da_platinum_deluxe too) has an surpassing error ratio (meaning the german “Grammatik” & “Zeichensetzung” )
3. Even if this would be true, i would just create a new account, so theres no problem for me
4. And even if these inactive accounts were the origin of the long loading time, why it would help to send some messages around???

Hope I could help, hf^^”

There is an interesting site about which always gets my laughing tears! 🙂

Technorati Tags: ICQ, spam

I have reported earlier about the rather new ICQ Help Center.

Well, I have noticed that the article in the knowledge base called “How do I upgrade to a new version of ICQ?” saying this:

“How do I upgrade to a new version of ICQ?
Once you download and install ICQ, notices will appear that new versions are out. Choosing to update eliminates the need for you to search for the latest ICQ version, as you automatically have the most recent version at all times!”

That’s the knowledge base article and it’s wrong

ah, read this for all info about this (i.e. my thread about it in the ICQ Focus Group):
tickle me!

Here is a quote of the thread! Enjoy reading! 🙂

Me: “But why have some people still ICQ 5.03 then?”

Udo: “You will automatically have the most recent version at all times.”

ICQ Support: “Please note that ICQ notifies its users about some of the version updates, patches and builds.”

Me: “Why does ICQ only notice about some version updates, patches and builds and not all? I think the Knowledge Base article sounds confusing here, I furthermore think that the update function should notice about all updates and new builds and not only of some!”

So knowledge base aticle says you automatically have the latest version
I say but many still have ICQ 5.02/ICQ 5.03 when latest version is ICQ 5.04
Udo says I am wrong, the article is correct
and ICQ Support says it notices only about _some_ updates

what a discussion 😀

Ah they replied again

“Hello Joerg Droege,

Your suggestion is taken into consideration.
Unfortunately right now our development program is full for the foreseeable future with high priority items.

Thank You,
Nick Slater,
The ICQ Support Team.”

Technorati Tags: ICQ, knowledge Base

Howdy readers!

I have decided to add anotehr useless feature to my blog’s sidebar; Flickr’s Daily Zeitgeist! Wherre you can see random phootos of the Flickr community!

Hope you will enjoy it as I do! 🙂

Technorati Tags: Flickr, zeitgeist

I have read it a while ago in the newspaper, that Harry Potter archived to be in over 100 translations, fine.
But they also showed a picture of the book covers, I tell you. The British guy suddenly got an Asian face, coloured face, etc.
Like very much faces.
And it boggles my mind, I mean… it’s officially a child’s book, shouldn’t it, especially since it’s a book for childs, keep a British guy just British to show that sense of euality? Nobody is more worth than another, you know.

Today, I have managed to retrieve the homepage, who lets you select all book covers by countries.

Have a look!

Technorati Tags: Harry Potter