When I fist saw this house on YouTube I actually thought it was a model or something, but…. its not, some guy actually did create this utterly cool Christmas display…
It makes my few Christmas ornaments look like nothing… Its SOOOOOOO cool..
So for a few idea’s for your next christmas display goto this site and see the walkthrough;
http://www.holdman.com/christmas/projects.asp
Have you ever had the need to assist your friends or family on their PC’s, sure if they live nearby its always nice to drop by and get a free dinner or beer and fix their problem, but should the trouble pc be located in say Milan and you are in Denmark that approach could prove costly..
Messenger claim to be able to do remote assist, however my experiences show that once you pass the first router (that is leap anywhere but in your own home) this proves impossible.. Anyway, take a look at;
http://www.teamviewer.com/products/firststeps.aspx
its simple, works and its free 🙂 You can now do remote control of pc’s on the other side of the world if you need…
As you may know, Google have for a long time had a translation service (equal to the Babelfish service on Altavista.com), the new thing is that it now offer translation to and from Danish also… It is even capable of dealing with the famous sentence “Rødgrød med fløde!” (a Danish sentence that is almost impossible to pronounce if you are not Danish) well sort of in English the translation reads “Rødgrød with cream!” but hey its close 🙂
Kan man det (which is what this site is called www.readmydamnblog.com) become “Can it”, hmmm not quite that close but hey it is a step in the right direction..
For a few cheap laughs go to;
http://www.google.com/translate
Now as everyone else I have heard of WOW (World of Warcraft), Second Life and the list go on and on, but with a ‘First Life’ to take care of my time to explore such universes are limited.
Anyway I stumbled across a reference to a YouTube video that I simply had to share with you, maybe a good reason to keep out of wow 😉
Just shows that online computing can be a hazard to your mental state 😉 *lol*, but hey its cool that someone actually has the time and energy to really get it under their skin, shame I did not invent WOW man they must be earning a mean $ or two these days.
Just a word of caution in conjunction with my previous description of the online backup service KeepIT.com
I bought this service after a short test of their free 2gb offering, the price seemed fair and they offered unlimited storage space. Things did not go smoothly though, at first their client software 1.0 was very poor, the client software seemed utterly unstable;
To top everything off a few extra actions was added to the story that forced me to discontinue my account; When I ordered the product I read the description on their website and downloaded and tested their product on my Win 2003 server, and everything seemed to be in order, however after returning from a weeks vacation in Milano I found that the backup job had stalled. All attempts to get it back up and running failed, so at last I contacted their support mail. The response was surprising, “our software do not support Windows 2003 server – have a nice day!” and then a link to a sub-page on their web site where this was stated. Well what surprises me was that I never saw this while ordering and testing (we all know it is impossible to make the installer software not allowing installation on unsupported systems, sarcasm ;-)), so I can only come to the conclusion that this restriction was either added after I bought the product or very poorly described. Anyhow the story ends somewhat satisfying, after a lot of writing back and forth KeepIT.com has agreed to return my payment and cancle my service.
A final word of caution, and perhaps the most important;
If you read the FAQ on KeepIT.com website (at least as it is today) you will find that if you loose your crypto key there is NO WAY of restoring your data, I found this very reassuring when I bought the product (as this meant my data was 100% private and secure). However upon reading the “Terms of usage” VERY closely you will be surprised to find that not only do KeepIT.com have a ‘sparekey’ they also reserve the right to decrypt and examine your data without prior warning if they so see fit, unless you explicit request that they do not store a ‘sparekey’ (this if however NEVER an option during the orderprocess). I find this option utterly disturbing.
I suggest you take a look at www.idrive.com instead, this service is cheaper has better client software and seem to respect your privacy. I will see if I cant make a short review / comparison later.
Well it would seem that SP3 not only contains improvements for the XP os, there are also a few annoying tweaks 😐
One is the removal of the Address toolbar in the Taskbar, it would appear that MS has been forced to remove this due to legal requirements.. I do agree that MS need to be kept on a ‘short leach’, but damn its annoying when they remove features like that.
Well never fear there are a few workarounds to try before ripping all your hair out.
1. http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2587494&SiteID=17
2. http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2614948&SiteID=17
I opt for trying the restoration of the browseui.dll file from a SP2 CD I386 directory (read 2 for more details), I have yet to try this but it seem plausible.
Another ‘feature’ is the “Mstsc” command where “/Console” has become “/Admin”, annoying like …. but better get use to it as its there to stay in both XP, Vista and 2008 (unknown if it will hit Win 2003 also at some time?).
Virtualization now cross platform
Adobe has taken application virtualization one step further than Softgrid/Thinstall, now you can use the web aware Adobe Air applications on any compatible platform (basically any web-able os).
Its an interesting idea that surely will appeal to many web-service providers.
A different solution for online backup is to use Jungle Disk. Jungle Disk is a software that utilize the Amazon S3 storage network which is very fair priced (approx $0.18 pr GB a month + an upload fee of about the same).
The solution has a quite good agent software (also comes in a USB version, so you can carry your online disk) which allow for scheduled backups, bandwidth throttling etc. etc. and the security seem quite convincing.
In the near future I will be comparing this with the www.Keepit.com solution, my feel for now is that Keepit is more home user aimed and Jungle Disk is usable for both, however the low FIXED price for Keepit do seem tempting.
Update Apr 8th, 2008: Please see warning against Keepit.com elsewhere in my blog
A company www.Keepit.com offers 2GB of free online backup-space (at least in Denmark) which may be quite nice for many users, may be enough to store your pictures and mail.
The client software is not the worlds most advanced I have been told, but again for home users it may be quite sufficient.
https://www.keepit.com/dansk/Home
Pay and get more :-), should you be willing to pay DKK 29 ($4.5 or €3.9) you get unlimited storage space. Seem like a quite reasonable solution.
I have not tried this yet so I am uncertain about security and encryption etc, but I have been told that it indeed uses encryption and your data should thus be safe from prying eyes.
Have you ever received a file either via mail or on a media that somehow made you suspicious, your antivirus cleared it but still you feel there could be something fishy going on…
Here is a remedy to improve your sense of security, upload the file to
here it will be scanned by numerous antivirus scanners for suspicious code, of cause this is no 100% guarantee, but at least your weakest link is not reduced to your antivirus.. here many antivirus engines need to be wrong at the same time 🙂
