April 2007 – Krunk4Ever!

April 30, 2007April 30, 2007

Updating WordPress Plugins

After upgrading wordpress to 2.1.*, I noticed that comments now had its own new tab. However, Akismet Spam was still under Manage. Turns out I was using Akismet 1.4 when 2.0 is already out. Upgrading took some work where I had to deactivate the plugin, download and extract the newer version and then reactivate the plugin.

After updating Akismet to 2.0, it moved the Comment Spam to the correct tab now.

Gallery’s plugin system was a lot user to use than WordPress, where all I had to do was click on the upgrade button. I can even see a list of official plugins, experimental plugins, and even community plugins and they’re installed with a simple click.

Maybe we’ll see this in a future version of WordPress.

April 30, 2007April 30, 2007

Letters From Iwo Jima & Flags Of Our Fathers

So I just finished watching Clint Eastwood’s 2 latest movies which I found out recently that they were meant to tell the same story, but from 2 different perspectives. Both are about the battle of Iwo Jima, but Letters From Iwo Jima was the story from the Japanese perspectives and Flags Of Our Fathers was from the American perspective. I thought both movies were done really well, and the message conveyed from both movies are rather different, yet feel the same.

Letters From Iwo Jima
Official Site
IMDb: 8.1/10 (9,924 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: A- / Yahoo! Users: B+
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 91% / Average Rating: 8.2/10
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com DVD
Amazon.com Soundtrack
Amazon.com HD DVD
Amazon.com Blu-Ray
MY RATING: 8/10

Flags Of Our Fathers
Official Site
IMDb: 7.2/10 (14,102 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: B+ / Yahoo! Users: B
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 73% / Average Rating: 7/10
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com DVD
Amazon.com HD DVD
Amazon.com Blu-Ray
MY RATING: 7/10

There’s really not much spoilers to these movies as they’re based on an actual events and we already know the outcome. Letters From Iwo Jima is shot almost completely in Japanese and attempts to reflect the view of the Japanese during the war time. The Japanese were a very proud race and they would rather suicide honorably when they’ve lost instead of begging for mercy from the enemy. It was suppose to be “an honor” to serve and die for the country, yet like us, many of them also have fear of going to war and never coming home. Their views of American soldiers were that we were pigs and barbaric like. Led by a great general, they have resorted to hiding in the mountains and what was supposed to be a couple day battle led on to last over a month. The story follows an ex-owner of a bakery who tries his best to survive in order to see his daughter which was born after he had left to prepare for war.

Letters From Iwo Jima mostly takes place on the island itself from the preparation of the battle to the end of the battler. Flags Of Our Fathers is a bit different in that it mashes 2 story lines together. The focus of this movie was on the photograph of the 6 men who had lifted the flag and stuck it in Iwo Jima. This story follows a corporal who was a medic for his platoon. The story goes back and forth between the battle grounds as the remaining heroes tour the country asking people to buy bonds. They message from this movie is that these are just regular people and not really heroes as we put them to be.

While watching Pumpkin Scissors, they talked about a secret unit which utilized flame throwers, and due to the inhumanness of burning enemies to death and the fact the soldiers who operated flame throwers for long periods of time suffered burns and problems in themselves, the project was scrapped. I recalled in WW2 movies that flame throwers were used and they’re actually quite effective. When I sawed them used in these movies, it got me thinking, are they banned now or did we just decide to stop using them. According to Wikipedia: Flamethrowers have not been in the U.S. arsenal since 1978, when the Department of Defense unilaterally stopped using them, because of public opinion concerns that found their use inhumane, although they are not banned in any international treaty the U.S. has signed. Thus, the US decision to remove flamethrowers from its arsenal is entirely voluntary. The USA Army does, however, use the M202A1 FLASH, a rocket launcher with four triethylaluminum-packed warheads.

April 29, 2007April 30, 2007

Random Crap

First of all, HAPPY BIRTHDAY CDMCC!!!

Random Crap:

Watch this water freeze instantly. This product will revolutionize shaved ice. (from Digg) – Honestly, I don’t really believe that’s just water. The 2 things that affect the physical state of water are temperature and pressure (if you remember that graph) and there’s a point where all 3 actually ~~meat~~ meet (a temperature and pressure where water is constantly changing between solid, liquid, and gas). However, a plastic water bottle doesn’t have enough strength to withstand the pressure needed to achieve what’s he’s trying to do, so my guess is something else must’ve been added. Also, after becoming ice for a bit, it pretty much changes back to liquid rather quickly. It actually reminds me of the supersaturation experiments we did back in high school chemistry.

Vertical Sitting Car (from Digg) – Is this satellite image on Google Maps showing that a car is parked vertically in the City of The Hague (Den Haag) in Netherlands? Or is it just optical illusion?

Great examples of Guerilla Marketing (from Digg) – I recently bought a book about guerilla marketing and it makes great reading. I love the idea of coming up with a truly unique idea for very little cash and turning any exposure you do get into sales. There are some great examples in this book so i thought id post a few of them here. If anyone would like to add to the list, please feel free. I’ve seen most of these before, but there were still a few good ones I haven’t seen before.

5 Free WordPress Plugins to help you Monetize your Blog (from Digg) – Here are 5 WordPress Plugins we’ve come across that can help you to monetize your blog.

The Complete Matrix Trilogy [HD DVD] – *drools*

Ten Reasons Why You’re not a Billionaire (from Digg) – People always are wondering, why am I not rich? Or, why can’t I make as much money as so-and-so? The answer is, that being rich is merely a state of mind. The excuse to why you are not yet a millionaire is really not because you don’t make enough money, its the way you use your money that determines why you are not yet a millionaire. I’ve been reading a lot of Donald Trump’s book, Trump: Think Like a Billionaire: Everything You Need to Know About Success, Real Estate, and Life, and everything he says really does make sense.

Cool Cakes (from Digg) – Yes, these are all real cakes, made from flour and eggs and frosting. No plastic models here.

Plitvicka Waterfalls (from Digg) – Croatia: Plitvicka Jezera National Park: waterfalls at Plitvicka Jezera National Park. Photo ©2004 by Jack Brauer. This waterfall is amazingly beautiful! Also, I noticed some similar sounding the photographer’s name is to 24’s Jack Bauer.

Plasma Pong (from Digg) – They’ve released the game! It was fun for a bit, then the computer got too hard.

Fast Food: Ads vs. Reality (from Digg) – Each item was purchased, taken home, and photographed immediately. Nothing
was tampered with, run over by a car, or anything of the sort. It is an accurate representation in every case. Shiny, neon-orange, liquefied pump-cheese, and all.

She told me we couldn’t afford beer anymore (from Digg) – Best beer ad ever

Soldiers out of cable (19 pics) – soldier figurines made completely made out of coil wires.

Starcraft Origami (from Digg) – Still lacking some paint, but besides that, they’re pretty good.

Why Are Americans Afraid of Being Naked? (from Digg) – Taylor, an American who has lived in Amsterdam for the last 25 years, thinks the negative reaction stateside is due to “puritanical prudishness,” which doesn’t balk at violence or soft porn on television, yet is offended by older nudity. “Now seeing older bodies — that’s reality TV if you want reality,” Taylor quips. A pretty good article about what’s very wrong about the American’s scale of what is bad. It talks about why art displaying nudity (such as the Jesus Christ status made from chocolate) is so bad, but you can have Victoria Secret models walk down the aisle on prime time TV (not that it’s a bad thing). Then there’s the common argument about violence vs sex.

Dark Lord of the Sky: Darth Vader Balloon (from Boing Boing) – When the Belgian 501st Legion FanWars Garrison first suggested that one of its members, Benoît Lambert, create a Death Star-shaped PVC helium balloon, he was not only thrilled but already envisioning a chance to show off his artistic talents as well as his love for Star Wars–and his skills as a hot-air balloonist.

Shocking: An Innovative iPod Case from DLO (from Digg) – In another shocking freezing over of hell, we have discovered an iPod case that is actually *gasp* innovative! This case for fifth generation iPods looks normal on the front, but the backside has a pretty nifty cable-management system. It has an extension that the cord can be wrapped around and the 3.5mm audio jack and earphones have their own little cutouts that they can reside in securely when not in use. It is available for $20 in clear or black. Too bad it only works with iPod headphones. This is genius! I’ve always never really quite knew what to do with the earphones as I wrap them around my iPod. Now this solves the problem. They need to make a iPod Nano version.

Turning carbon dioxide into fuel – using solar power (from Digg) – Their device captures energy from the sun, converts it to electrical energy and “splits” carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide (CO) and oxygen. Obviously carbon monoxide in and of itself is not great either but millions of pounds of it are used each year to manufacture chemicals including detergents and plastics. It can also be converted into liquid fuel.

Sugar Free: Ants, Muffin (from Digg) – The task was to communicate that anything made with Sugar Free tastes the same, as when made using sugar. To dramatize this, we decided to use the most credible ambassadors for sweetness – Ants. We experimented with syrup made of Sugar Free and sweet lime, and found that even the ants couldn’t tell the difference. We painted the stape of a muffin on a 14″ x 19″ poster, using this syrup. And, left the rest to the ants. I’m curious, doesn’t the sweet lime actually make this experiment not as credible?

Episiotomy delivers doctor to court, settlement reached – Sara Wallace regularly complained of pain in her uterus region after she gave birth. Then she awoke one morning to find feces in her vagina. She and her husband David sued the on-call doctor who delivered their baby.

Useless Facts: The difference between a blimp and a zeppelin (from Digg) – Like all tough questions in life, this is one Wikipedia could easily answer: A non-rigid airship, or blimp, differs from a rigid airship (e.g. a Zeppelin) in that it does not have a rigid structure that holds the airbag in shape. Xyon and I were just discussing the other day what the difference between a zeppelin and a blimp was.

Eating your own face (from Digg) – This guy can do it, can you?

12 secrets your car insurer won’t tell you (from Digg) – Knowing how the industry works can save you a lot of money and grief. Here are the secrets behind the premiums, and how you can save after an accident.

Village girl’s unusually large feet (from Digg) – Although I feel sorry for her, her feet reminds me of one of those creatures made up in Spore.

Guy gets pissed that his message telling the janitor to unclog the shower doesn’t get fixed, so he upgrades his dry erase marker to sharpie (from link)

Great Ads (from Digg) – another set of funny ones.

April 28, 2007

Lucky Star

I started watching a new anime called Lucky Star, and it’s really cute! If I had to qualify it, it’d a Belldandy type of anime. I actually would say it’s cuteness overloaded, yet still so funny.

(from Artemyst via shuushuu)

Description from Artemyst:

They’re cosplaying 4 other shows.

Top left is Akari from To Heart (Lucky Star’s Tsukasa)

Bottom left is Rin from Fate/Stay Night (Lucky Star’s Kagami)

Top right is Mikuru from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (Lucky Star’s Miyuki)

Bottom right is Shana from Shakugan no Shana (Lucky Star’s Konata)

I’ve also attached a video clip of it so you know how overkill this cuteness thing is:

Several things they chat about are quite relevant to me, like I actually push the ice cream down into the cone so at the end I don’t have to be just eating the cone. It’s just hilarious, yet so cute!

April 27, 2007

Finders Keepers

Man charged for spending misplaced money –

LA VISTA, Neb. – A La Vista man was charged with felony theft after he spent $80,000 his bank deposited by mistake in his account.

George J. Costa, 45, is charged with theft of lost or mislaid property. It is a crime to take money that’s been “delivered under a mistake.”

More than $106,000 was deposited into Costa’s account between August 2006 and February after a Pinnacle Bank employee mixed up account numbers, according to the Nebraska State Patrol.

The bank was able to recover $26,000 from Costa’s account after the mistake was recovered.

“‘Finder’s keepers’ and ‘possession is nine-tenths of the law’ aren’t legal principles,” said Sarpy County Attorney Lee Polikov.

Costa’s lawyer, James Martin Davis, said Costa is willing to work out repayment in civil court but shouldn’t be charged criminally.

“If somebody sticks money in your pocket and you spend it, you can’t be convicted of theft,” he said.

I read this article and was shocked about how the law treats this situation and have been chatting with Ungsunghero about it and both of us agree that to charge this man with felony is way too extreme, considering the fact that he played no part in the money getting mistakenly deposited into his account.

There’s 3 parties involved here:

Depositor – party who is depositing the money
Bank – party that is transferring the money from Depositor to account specified
Receiver – party that receives the money

Depositor has been making deposits at a bank stating it should be deposited in account X. Bank takes the money and deposits in account Y. Account holder of Y (the Receiver) finds an unexpected semi-large sum of money and like someone who thought he won the Lotto, goes off on a spending spree.

As you can see, the bank is totally at fault here, though the receiver could have from his conscience contacted the bank to clarify the origin of the money, but if he/she doesn’t, is it truly a crime, or even worse, a felony?

If I had accidentally deposited money into the wrong account (say via a wire transfer), I’m pretty much SOL (sh*t outta luck). I can request a stop transfer immediately, but if the money has already reached the other side, who knows how much trouble I’d need to go through and there’s probably a high chance I won’t see a penny of it back. However, if the bank mistakenly deposits the money into someone else’s account, they’re off the hook?

Purely looking at this, the bank’s at complete fault. The mistake was committed by a clerk, and the clerk represents the bank. Given that there was a semi-large sum of money being deposited/transferred, you’d think they’d have at least another clerk to verify the transaction just in case clerk #1 made a mistake. To err is human, right? Even I have to read everything I fill out on a rebate form multiple times to make sure I don’t forget anything. Finally, given the fact that there’s a 6 months between the 1st mistake was committed and when it was finally realized, it becomes even more of the bank’s fault.

If someone drops off a bag of money on my lawn every month and doesn’t come and take it back for 6 months, even if it’s mislaid property, I think it’s perfectly understandable if I’d start using that money. Now you come and say you want the money back or you’ll be throwing me in jail, that’s ridiculous. At this point, you can only blame the guy driving around dumping the bag of money onto the wrong lawn.

Ungsunghero and I discussed this further and we contemplated what would’ve happened if the Receiver called in and question if there was a mistake, and if the bank clerk said there was no problem and that transaction looks fine, would he be off the hook. Similarly, if I called DOT (or DMV in California), and asked if it was okay for me to make U-turns on regular streets they said that was legal, if a cop pulls me over and gives me a ticket for making an invalid U-turn when according to whoever I spoke to was legal, I’d be damned if I can’t use what DOT told me to fight off the ticket.

Ungsunghero brought up a good point that it might depend on how high I go. If I had gotten to a clerk, it might not mean as much if I had actually been propagated to the manager/head of the department.

Although I don’t agree in the “finders keepers” way of doing things, being charged criminally for doing finders keepers is just wrong. The money was not registered to any specific person and it was being deposited into this man’s account. Isn’t there some sort of 30 day or 60 day limit for lost (or mislaid) property? If I found an item and took it to the Police Lost and Found, if no one comes and claims it in 30 or 60 days, it’s mine right?

What should happen is that they get the remaining amount back, force him to sell off or auction off any item he bought with the money, and the bank should be responsible for the rest, as it was clearly their mistake.

April 26, 2007April 26, 2007

Gallery – Tags

So after switching over to the Ajaxian theme, I’ve decided to see if tagging support has been added to Gallery (maybe via a plug-in). Well it actually started when Artemyst asked me if Gallery supported tagging or he was going to switch to something like danbooru. I searched and found this thread: [Tags] New Module for Gallery 2.2.

I’ve given it a whirl and it’s rather neat and they’re still adding a bunch of features and stuff. Don’t bother downloading the one attached to the thread. You can download this plug-in right out of your Gallery’s admin panel. From their wiki:

login as admin
plugins from the left navigation
Click the Get More Plugins tab.
Click the Show repository list button.
Check the Community plugins box; Save
Click the update repository list button; click continue.
Under the Extra Data section download the the tags module.

This will put 2 new items in the side bar of your admin panel:

Tags Management
Tags Settings

Tags Management is managing your tags. You can view the list of your tags here, but mostly it’s meant for deleting and renaming your tags. In Tags Settings, you have some more tweaks you could do like limit the number of tags shown, to enable Tag Cloud, etc.

The Tag Cloud is rather cool. You could see mine here: Tag Cloud

I’ve only started tagging new stuff and some random old stuff to test out it’s feature. It’s come a long way I must say. I was playing with v1.0.0 for quite awhile and had many issues. You can read the thread I posted earlier to see what a newb I am.

Things the author said we could look forward to include joining of tags (i.e. And/Or 2 or more tags).

The ability to add tags directly in album view was a really nice addition. Too bad for Ajaxian, the theme disables that block since it squishes all the images together. It’d be nice if the same box was available in photo mode. Bulk edit’s really nice too with the ability, well, to edit 15 items at a time, instead of 1 by 1.

What I really want is to be able to allow anonymous tagging, but sent into a moderation system, and maybe even have a service like Akismet to filter out spam.

April 25, 2007October 8, 2007

Samsung SGH-t519 Bluetooth Synchornization

Thanks to KrunkReader and Artemyst for telling me about Samsung PC Studio, a free software you could download off their website. Apparently if you use their software, you CAN synchronize with Bluetooth and it’s EXTEREMELY easy! Guess I should’ve done more research before I ordered that USB cable.

So after installing the software, there was a connection setup wizard, which was rather simple. I chose Bluetooth and it went and automatically went through steps to pair with my phone.

One thing I noticed right off the bat was that the UI is very nice! Very shocking as most of these cell phone programs I’ve used before were flaky and often crashed or did something unexpected. Worse thing was it was often hard to figure out exactly what you had to do to make it do what you wanted it to do. I’ve got to say Samsung has done an excellent job with this software. Here are some screenshots:

This is totally awesome!

April 24, 2007April 24, 2007

Samsung SGH-t519

So my mom flew up to visit me, bringing along me my new toy: Samsung SGH-t519. From the picture itself, it looks rather bulky. However, if you look at it from the side, it’s actually really thin.

I haven’t really had much time to play with it. It came with the regular stuff such as manuals, ac charger, car charger, headset, battery, and the actual phone. Fortunately, we didn’t change phone numbers this time and all I had to do was swap the SIM card.

The 1st thing I tried was of course to sync with my contacts in my Outlook contacts list. However, apparently even though this phone supports bluetooth, it doesn’t support synching via bluetooth. It supports headsets, handsfree, serial port, dial up networking, file transfer, and even object push. Just not synchronization. I then hopped onto eBay and purchased a USB Data Cable for less than $5 shipped, which apparently comes with software called PC Sync which supports Outlook and Outlook Express.

For now, there’s only 3 #s in my phone book:

Customer Care
Voice Mail
411

Which appear to be defaults that T-Mobile has preset.

I was actually contemplating on entering commonly used numbers into my phone manually, when suddenly I remember the SIM cards address book feature. It’s quite limited, but should suffice for this week while I await my data cable to arrive. I copied all the existing phone numbers from my Sony Ericsson T610 onto the SIM and then copied it over onto the phone. Of course with SIM cards, instead of having 1 entry per person, you get 2 or 3 each followed by a /M (mobile), /H (home), or /W (work). And after I transfered all the phone numbers into the phone, I went and tried to delete it from the SIM card. Apparently to copy stuff onto it, you can do so without authentication. To delete from the SIM card requires a password. I tried entering all the combinations which it could be. Turns out the password is 00000000, which I found after searching with the query: forgot sim card password.

For reviews and more description, you can read about it on Amazon.com.

Update:
I got to play with my phone for a few days. I’ve noticed some interesting things. There’s only 1 port used for both charging and the headset. Holding * locks the keypad. Holding # enables/disables silence mode. When charging my phone, the backlight won’t turn off. Good thing I don’t sleep next to my phone.

There’s even a microSD slot. I’m guessing for storing pictures, music, and video. There was a deal at Office Depot this week: FAR Dane-Elec 1GB microSD Memory Card @ OD B&M. If you’re not familiar with the bargain lingo, FAR = free after rebate, OD = Office Depot, B&M = brick & mortar = retail store (vs online). There’s 2 rebates involved, but I was already willing to shell out a few bucks just got get this memory card. Who can beat free, right?

April 23, 2007

Peaceful Warrior

Didn’t really have much expectations in regards to this movie when I first watched the trailer. Looked like an interesting feel good movie, and that was what it was. I personally thought the story was pretty good and the cinematography was excellent. They did a really good job with the slow motion effects (nothing spectacular, but it fit the story nicely). Plus the fact that this was shot at UC Berkeley (tons of free advertising for Cal). w00t! There were couple places I didn’t recognize, but oh well, maybe I’ll try to find it next time I visit.

I do have to say, the trailer had misguided me quite a bit. The storyline did not flow as I had expected it to according to the trailer. Also there were scenes that were intertwined with dialog that occurred much later on.

Official Site
IMDb: User Rating: 7.0/10
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: C+ / Yahoo! Users: B-
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 21% / Average Rating: 4.6/10
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com Soundtrack
Amazon.com Book
MY RATING: 6.5/10

Spoilers: (Show)

April 22, 2007October 8, 2007

Ajaxian Theme Misalignment

I had begin noticing some weird alignment issue with Gallery’s Ajaxian Theme. On page 2 onwards of any album, the bottom next and last button links would be shifted a bit lower than it’s desired location:

I started a thread on Gallery’s forum: ajaxian theme and mis-alignment of next/last on page 2 onwards and pointed out that the top links look okay, while the bottom didn’t. I also noted the fact that source wise, the top had them in reverse order, where it wrote out the next/last links first, before writing out the first/previous:

top:
<div class="next-and-last">...</div> <div class="first-and-previous">...</div>

bottom:
<div class="first-and-previous">...</div> <div class="next-and-last">...</div>

I thought maybe if I can reverse the order of those statements, this might be fixed. I decided to see if I could figure this out. Looking at the style sheet (/themes/ajaxian/theme.css), it appears this is how the blocks are defined:

.next-and-last { float: right; } .next-and-last.no-previous { float: none; text-align: right; }

I started playing with the .next-and-last style, but didn’t really get anywhere unless I manually set it to be shifted up x-pixels.

I then found /modules/core/templates/blocks/Navigator.tpl, which actually uses this class and it just appears to be something simple that returns first-and-previous or next-and-last block.

Then I found /themes/ajaxian/templates/album.tpl, which actually calls the Navigator.

On the top, it showed:
{g->block type="core.Navigator" navigator=$theme.navigator reverseOrder=true}

but the bottom only shows:
{g->block type="core.Navigator" navigator=$theme.navigator}

I added the reverseOrder=true to the bottom, and that fixed it.

Enjoy!