# Thursday, March 24, 2005

Frankly, I can not speak Korean

But I don't think it's required to enjoy this excellent music video:

Frankly, I can not speak in English.(a friend of mine helped me to write this one) but it would be quite comfortable for you to watch movie which I had made, because there is quite few letter and words. Please make yourself at home while watching it

[ amalloc of SamBakZa ]

The story then continues with step 2. Perhaps even more on SamBakZa.net, but as I said I don't speak Korean.

Props to Ed (who has no web page).

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Free SSL Cert?

OK, these guys have some questions:

Do you have a website or run even a web server and want to secure the traffic between your visitor's browser and the web site? Did you find out that, in order to make your site SSL aware, you'll need a SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate? Were you also surprised to find out that such a certificate can cost you hundreds of dollars, and that they are only valid for one year? For what, you might ask yourself?

[ StartCom Free SSL Certificate Project ]

And basically the answer is that if they don't check out people, anyone can get an SSL certificate, and the little lock will mean nothing but traffic is encrypted. Part of what that is supposed to provide is 3rd party confirmation about who you are dealing with. Clearly installation of their root certificate will make your machine somewhat more gullible, and you won't know for sure that when you see the wee lock that you are dealing with the company that says they are that company.

However, they also point out that few people fully understand all of that stuff, and CAs don't check too much to issue a certificate. Most importantly for web developers this means the availability of a true, valid, painless, SSL certificate for localhost for all of your development needs. Now that's something to get excited about.

Update: StartCom has asked me to "check out our project again", as then have increased their offerings and my above statement is no longer true.

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Great News

Ever since Nintendo dropped Silicon Knights as a secondary developer, I've been worried that I wouldn't see any more games from them:

SEGA has announced an agreement "to acquire and publish next-generation game content" from Silicon Knights - perhaps putting to bed persistent rumours surrounding the Canadian developer's future work.

The companies will collaborate on a new franchise for next-generation consoles, they said this afternoon, although details have not been discussed. "Next-generation consoles" could include any of Xbox 2, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Revolution.

[ Eurogamer.net - SEGA signs Silicon Knights for next-gen ]

I still mean to go back and try to finish Eternal Darkness. The controls are a bit clunky, but since it was close to launch that's understandable. The sheer originality of the game makes it so enticing.

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# Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Destination 2006

I think I should start planning now:

Kyoto is one of Japan's leading large cities, founded upon the Heian Capital, which was built in 794 AD. Its population of 1.47 million citizens lives in harmony with a natural and cultural environment which has developed over time immemorial. Kyoto City is a place where you can truly savor first-hand a rich depth of culture and art steeped in tradition, and set against the changing backdrop of the four seasons, with each one possessing its own charm.

[ Kyoto City Web / Message from Mayor / Welcome to Kyoto ]

The question is, will one week be enough? Or perhaps two would be better.

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This guy didn't invent AJAX

But he did name it. And I think it works:

Q. Why did you feel the need to give this a name?

A. I needed something shorter than “Asynchronous+JavaScript+CSS+DOM+XMLHttpRequest” to use when discussing this approach with clients.

[ adaptive path ajax: a new approach to web applications ]

Props to Gibson for pointing out the "new" name for this approach.

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# Monday, March 21, 2005

And what did you do with your day?

Here's what you should have done, if the taquitos.net guys hadn't already done it:

Taquitos.net is the most comprehensive snack food site on the Interweb, featuring independent reviews of more than 2000 snacks. In addition to snack reviews, Taquitos.net has information on Krispy Kreme doughnuts, chicken nuggets, grilled cheese sandwiches, chocolate milk, snack mascots and more.

[ FAQ about Taquitos.net ]

Mmmm yummy. And with RSS, do you hear that Nintendo? RSS!

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Rhapsody Usability Issue #43

I love Rhapsody, however there are certainly many usability issues. One I've just stumbled across is the inability to mail a custom radio station. Therefore if you want to listen in on the sort of thing I'm listening to this morning, you'll have to create your own radio station as such:

Cool Jazz
Artist List
1. Vince Guaraldi
2. Stan Getz
3. Miles Davis
4. Dave Brubeck
5. Chet Baker
Similar artists you will also hear include:
Tommy Flanagan, Ramsey Lewis, Oscar Peterson, Modern Jazz Quartet, Gil Evans, George Shearing, Gerry Mulligan, Duke Ellington, Clifford Brown, Charlie Byrd, Billy Taylor, Billie Holiday, Art Pepper, Wayne Shorter, Thelonious Monk…

And, I assume, you can use the above suggestions on a non-Rhapsody service, or even on iTunes.

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# Thursday, March 17, 2005

Food TV has some St. Paddy's Day ideas...

They get you all excited about the depths of Irish cuisine:

Irish cuisine covers a lot more than basic meat and potatoes. It's hearty yet refined, and utilizes indigenous ingredients for a truly fresh taste.

[ Food Network: St. Patrick's Day ]

So how many ways can one cook bacon, potatoes, and cabbage? (And how many of those can be cooked without the bacon?)

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# Tuesday, March 15, 2005

SharePoint is cool

Yet frustrating.

Windows SharePoint Services is a collection of services for Windows Server 2003 that you can use to share information, collaborate with other users on documents, and create lists and Web Part Pages.

[ Sharepoint Products and Technologies ]

Clearly a lot of time and effort has gone into WSS and SPS. Clearly it allows some great collaboration. And clearly there is much to learn.

I just want to know how to import and export from a Discussion Board. I'm sure I'll eventually want to know how to import and export from all sorts of Lists, Document Libraries, etc. And I'm sure this is one of the first things that everyone has to figure out, so why don't they make it a wee bit easier?

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# Sunday, March 13, 2005

Windows Time (synchronization service) not good enough?

I have a PC that seems to have a horrible clock in it, and it's always running about 5 minutes slow. It's certainly possible that something on the box is messing with the date and time, I'm not sure. I do know that the Windows XP time sync that's built in just doesn't run frequently enough to fix the issue, so I went looking:

TimeSync is an NT service that keeps your system's clock in sync with an accurate network server.

[ TimeSync ]

I'm actually surprised I never found this one before. It's easy to install, works great, has tons of options, runs as a service, seems to be freeware, and seems to have correctly my clock issue for the short term.

I did disable the XP service that was syncing time, to ensure that this program was doing the work, which I think I'd recommend for anyone else.

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Why wait until E3?

This is Reggie Fils-Aime's response to an interviewers question about the upcoming E3:

We want them to leave feeling that “Wow, Zelda is going to be as huge hit and I want it now. And I’m going to go to my local retailer and put a deposit for the super premium edition of the game,” which we’ll make available. We want the fans to walk away saying, “Wow, look at all this great GBA product and I’m going to be a two-handheld consumer, having both my old-time GBA as well as my brand new DS.” I want the consumer walking away just totally blown away with all the great product coming out for DS, especially Mario Kart, Metroid Prime Hunters, and Animal Crossing. So, in total, I want our fan walking away saying, “Yes, I need to be a three-system household, SP, DS, and GCN.”

[ 4 color rebellion Gamespot Interviews Reggie ]

But who isn't like this already? Just let me know when reservations are taking place, I'm ready to plunk down a deposit on the new Zelda. And who doesn't already own a GameCube, GBA, and DS? Could I be in the minority there?

(As the fan boys already know, Reggie is Nintendo's Vice President of Sales and Marketing)

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# Saturday, March 12, 2005

Too cool

This looks like a ton of fun:

From the entry of the 800-pound o-daiko drum on a cart illuminated by Japanese lanterns to the extreme physicality of the playing positions, the Kodo Drummers are all about ritual performance. Two dozen Japanese musicians man their taiko drums, fues, and shamisens in a performance that includes choreography and vocals.

[ Washington Performing Arts Society ]

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# Friday, March 11, 2005

It may make you drool on your keyboard

But all studies show you will eventually return to normalcy.

Eggs, I really love you like the sky above

[ iloveegg ]

And interestingly the UK version seems to be less abstract, and the Korean version requires a software installation so I didn't go there.

Props to the Persian Dispersion.

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# Thursday, March 10, 2005

My odd family

My family has a mailing list. I believe it just may be my primary means of communication with most of my family. Is that wrong? Please don't judge, at least not yet:

Iwata announced that the Wi-Fi protocol for Nintendo DS will provide users with a link to other players across the country or around the world. Once the service begins later this year, Nintendo DS users will be able to connect to the service wirelessly at Wi-Fi hot spots, whether they’re at home, in a hotel or at a coffee shop. As one of several Wi-Fi games, Nintendo’s in-house development team is creating a new Animal Crossing game for global Wi-Fi play.

[ News : Article ]

Once Animal Crossing DS over WiFi becomes my primary means of communication with the entire world, then you can pity me. That is if you have Animal Crossing DS and can mail me your ridicule, or a fossil...

And I can't wait to tell the first client, instead of using a conference call, let's all just meet in my Animal Crossing DS town, mind the weeds!

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Too cool

If only Yaty was here, and I wasn't so sick, I'm sure I'd try and catch part of this:

Once again this year we at the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital have embarked on the exciting journey of presenting a diverse and engaging array of films from around the globe to challenge and broaden our audiences’ perception and understanding of the complex world that surrounds us.

[ DC Environmental Film Festival ]

Think I'll just go hug a tree instead.

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# Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Google predicts my life to be very short

Gmail claims "you'll never need to delete another message" but I'm 9 months in, and I've used 12% of my 1GB. A little math will tell you that I've only got 5.5 more years left, according to Google.

Unless Google has some nefarious plan to rid the world of email in 5.5 years, and I'll be stuck at 98% usage or so, forever...

Or possibly they just haven't thought that far yet, and will worry about it when the first person (with real usage) hits 75% or so, and then they can devise a plan to deal with it. (which will likely be to postpone that by increasing sizes to 2GB or 5GB or whatever, as I'm sure storage will be that much cheaper in 5.5 years).

Or, maybe that's just a marketing slogan, and when my space fills up they'll say "so, what did you expect for free?".

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