scratchings: February 5, 2006

February 11, 2006

How to Take a Caffeine Nap. . .

Researchers have found that the best way to stay awake is to drink a cup of coffee, or other caffeinated beverage, and then take an immediate nap. See details here. . .

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Intel Shows Off Its Quad Core!

Just as the bragging rights for dual-core chip supremacy are dying down, Intel gave the first glimpse of a quad-core chip coming next year!

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Exclusive: Hands-On with PlayStation 3

Kikizo presents a detailed, early account of its first-hand experience with a little known console called PS3. Is it looking like a new generational leap, or emotion engine tears? We have some answers.

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The Birthday Paradox Revisited

if you're sitting in a room with forty people in it, what are the chances that two of those people have the same birthday?...Not 11% as most would conclude but in reality, due to Math's convoluted reasoning, the odds are about 90%. This phenomenon is known as the Birthday Paradox

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LED sign now lets you upload pictures

The LED sign that made front page last week now lets you upload images to display on the sign, very cool, check it out.

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The Birthday Paradox Revisited

Azureus 2.4.0.0 Update

Various interface and performance improvements as well as bug fixes.

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Preview of ÂµTorrent's web-based interface (with screens)

Here's a preview I wrote up of ÂµTorrent's web-based interface (WebUI), currently undergoing alpha testing. It allows you to manage your ÂµT downloads - you can start them, stop them, add new torrents, search and more using a web browser, from anywhere in the world. Then again, you could just go and use VNC or the Swing Web Interface for Azureus.

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February 10, 2006

How to build your own Web 2.0 layout

The author shows you, step by step, how to look Web 2.0

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How to build your own Web 2.0 layout

The author shows you, step by step, how to look Web 2.0

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Gmail for your domain

This special beta test lets you give Gmail, Google's webmail service, to every user at your domain. Gmail for your domain is hosted by Google, so there's no hardware or software for you to install or maintain.

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CSS Basics

This is the best, cleanest, simplest tutorial I have found for getting started with CSS.

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How to get your missed TV shows with Azureus and Bittorrent

Good post on how to automate downloading TV shows through Bittorrent. Also includes a good way to remotely submit torrents to your Azureus client.

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Blender 3D: Noob to Pro

This book is a great tutorial to the free, open source Blender 3D graphics modeling and rendering software.

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You Too Can Be Banned From AdSense With No Money Down (Enquire Within)

Nice article discussing how to handle adsense bans. By the way, I like the introduction!

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February 8, 2006

10,000+ songs & music videos free

A new site is letting smaller bands actually get their music out there. (200MB's worth at least) The powerful search function lets you find music you have never heard that fits your taste and is actually good.

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How to convert your photoshop document to a CSS in less than 30 seconds

As a webdesigner youâ��re working a lot with photoshop and now you would like to convert your psd (or jpg, png, whatever photoshop can read) files to a valid CSS and (X)HTML document with just a few clicks ? If you want to know how to do it, everything is explained step by step with proper screen captures just in case ;)

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Web Design from Scratch

This site is for everyone involved or interested in creating web sites - whether novice or expert. It will help you understand what makes web sites succeed or fail, and what can be done to increase the chance of success.

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Use Google Adsense? Don't Forget To File 1099-MISC

Adsensetaxes.com is a free resource about paying income tax on Google Adsense revenue.

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How to connect your PC to your HDTV

We've got the ins and outs as well as the gotchas all in one spot so you can take advantage of that HDTV set as a PC monitor. If you've ever wondered about the different resolutions between monitors and TVs or to determine what adapters this might require, this is a must-read.

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Programmers get their own search engine

A tool, known as Krugle, is designed to deliver easy access to source code and other highly relevant technical information in a single, clean, easy-to-use interface for programmers. Krugle works by crawling, parsing, and indexing code found in open source repositories and code that exists in archives, mailing lists, blogs, and Web pages.

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CableCARD: a primer

"CableCARD has been in the news a lot lately, but there are still a lot of questions surrounding what it does and how it works. Curious about CableCARD? Dive on in and discover what it's all about."

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Apollo astronauts noticed something very strange about shadows on the moon

Thirty years ago their strange experiences were as well-known to the public as the Man in the Moon. Not anymore. Many of the best tales of Apollo have faded with the passage of time. Even NASA personnel have forgotten some of them.

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Discover new bands, artists, movies, and books

Gnod is a self-adapting system, living on this server and 'talking' to everyone who comes along. Gnods intention is to learn about the outer world and to learn 'understanding' its visitors. This enables gnod to share all its wisdom with you in an intuitive and efficient way. You might call it a search-engine to find things you don't know about.

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New Gmail features are for US only!

ok so i keep seeing all these new gmail features talked up on digg and keep wondering why i STILL dont have them in my gmail account. i found this site that outlines how by simply changing the language to 'English (US)' it unlocks all the new features released in like the last 6 moths or so.

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Indonesia Lost World With PICS!!!

The pictures of the new species found in Indonesia. Pretty amazing!

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Windows Vista will be released December 1st

Or maybe November 30th. Microsoft EMEA has put up a contest website to guess the Vista launch date. After you submit a date, it loads a "hint" video. A look at the page source shows that until Nov 30 the video comes from an "early" directory; this switches over to "late" on Dec 1. You can guess the rest.

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Hack up your MySpace profile

Let's face it, the profiles on MySpace are UGGGLY. I came across this nice tutorial for getting your profile to look exactly the way that you want it to. AUTHOR'S WARNING: This post contains information that exploits MySpace and is against their terms of use.

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Flexible OLED display prototype demonstrated

Universal Display Corporation will show off a four inch diagonal display and demo it running full motion video. The display is .1mm thick, and weighs only six grams, compared to a glass LCD which would weigh about 20-30 grams.The display is capable of displaying full motion video at a resolution of 100 dpi.

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Hack up your MySpace profile

February 7, 2006

The IT Crowd - Episode 3 Online

Watch the third episode of "The IT Crowd" from Channel 4's website. (Only works for UK users).

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Intel's Free IT Simulation Game

A little online game from Intel that is really addicting. You get to be the IT manager and hire other workers, buy hardware, and manage the server room. It's pretty fun, check it out.

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Extend Firefox Contest Finalists

We are happy to announce the finalists in our Extend Firefox Contest, a contest held to award the best and brightest extension developers in the Firefox community. The contest asked entrants to create Firefox Extensions that are innovative, useful, and integrate with todayâ��s Web services. Over 200 Extensions were submitted to the contest.

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Apple Counts Down to 1 Billion Songs

Apple is counting down to the 1 billionth song purchased in the iTunes Music Store. Also, win an iPod Nano and an $100 iTMS gift card every 100,000th song.

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Army's New Stormtrooper-esque "Facial Armor"

Because of the increased risk of airborne fragmentation threats, resulting from improvised explosive devices, also known as IEDâ��s, MTek has produced the Predator Facial Armor System Technology, or FAST for short.

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1GB iPod Nano Released Today!

Well, it seems that a 1GB Nano is upod us. This explains why the US Apple store was down at the time of this being written. It seems that the Australian store jumped the gun and uploaded the specifications sheet early.

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Day of Defeat: Source Free This Weekend

This weekend Valve is inviting everyone to try Day of Defeat: Source for free via Steam. Visit Steampowered.com to pre-load the game and be set to play at 12:00 pm (noon) PST on Friday, when the Free Weekend begins. Join the ranks as Axis or Allies troops located in Western Europe during the height of the war in 1944.

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February 6, 2006

CSS Navigation Magnification

This is an awesome experiment/technique to make an HTML list magnify like the Dock in OS X using only CSS. Code and examples given to use on your own site.

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Watch the first 10 minutes of a movie for free

Interesting concept. Not sure if legal or not but First10Minutes is a website that allows you to stream or download the first 10 minutes of DVD's released within the past 5 years for free.

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Why Apple Really Ditched PowerPC

Apple wants to make their switch to Intel chips seem like a no-brainer, but the reality of it was a lot more complicated than just faster chips for Macs.

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Get rid of light switches forever

hide light switches directly in the wall, you can just wave your hand across to make it work. Kind of like the clapper for 2006

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Over 300 very popular Movie, TV Show, and Book Title Fonts

Check these out. You can download any of them that you want for free, and they're pretty cool.

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Need CSS Inspiration? Here's a Huge List.

The question of finding good 3 column layouts comes up in the mail list from time to time. Here are some that I have found, along with a few notations about what features they include and how they work. The judgment of "good" is left to you and your needs. Each offers interesting techniques for the CSS student.

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.Net programmers are one of the top 5 most in-demand jobs

Two tech jobs in high demand these days are .NET (dot net) developers and quality assurance analysts. Developers who are expert users of Microsoft's software programming language .NET can make between $75,000 and $85,000 a year in major cities when they're starting out.

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DOWNLOAD all the CD and DVD COVERS you want HASTLE FREE

In one simple search - No sign-up, No membership - No cookies, just simply search and it will bring up all the covers for you to download FREE

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Retail Secrets: The Best Buy Wall Numbers

Learn all about your local Best Buy store --Â see how much stuff is getting stolen, and how many people are buying extended warranties and magazine subscriptions, etc. -- just by looking at the large numbers posted on the wall. Retail hack!

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Bittorrent Masking: How to Avoid Getting Tracked as You Download.

"Recently, a two-part freeware privacy solution has become available for torrent downloaders. These two items work together to "scramble" and conceal your P2P torrent identity online"

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AJAX Design Patterns

In this tutorial we describe how to build a modularized architecture to create complex AJAX Applications. Unlike most of the AJAX tutorials we focus on the design and implementation of a whole application and not on the low level details.

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Paper-like display in two years

Philips Polymer Vision has announced foldable, rollable, ultra-thin displays in two years' time. These displays don't use alot of energy so they are perfect for large laptops and cellphones.

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TOP 10 Must have Vidcasts. Turn off your TV and watch these IPTV shows.

Great list of 10 shows that you can subscribe to for your video iPod or just to watch on your computer or other device. This is a great list over at PodStar.com I'm one of the vidcasts listed (# 3). I had nothing to do with the list, but its a damn good one as I watched 8 out of the 10 listed, and now of course watch all 10.

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CSS Positioning

To use CSS for layout effectively, it helps to know how it's used to position page content. This article gives an overview of the methods and rules that govern visual rendering in the CSS2 specification. It also points out some things to watch out for.

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February 11, 2006

February 10, 2006

February 8, 2006

February 7, 2006

February 6, 2006

life is absurd