Today is a Bat Macumba day

Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba oh
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macum
Bat Macumba ê ê, Batman
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat
Bat Macumba ê ê, Ba
Bat Macumba ê ê
Bat Macumba ê
Bat Macumba
Bat Macum
Batman
Bat
Ba
Bat
Bat Ma
Bat Macum
Bat Macumba
Bat Macumba ê
Bat Macumba ê ê
Bat Macumba ê ê, Ba
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat
Bat Macumba ê ê, Batman
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macum
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba oh
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá!


n.-

Can you make it easier to understand please?

It's the question nobody really asks when I try to explain Security concepts & best practices.

Analogies are still the best way to achieve good results.
Don't worry, I don;t think you're stupid! It's just not easy to understand a new subject like IT Security. It's complex, technical, political, sensitive...

Heck, as professionals, we all had to get those concepts in our own head until we just snapped our fingers as we achieved enlightenment!

Sometimes, some people are able to put take real life situations and transpose them for easy understanding.

Here's a very good example - City buses are like desktops.


n.-

when watching videos (and pictures) stops time

one link leads to another...

It started with a visit to ComputerLove, followed by an diagonal scan through their feeds and ended with the eye and ear bashing '08 REEL from EAT MY DEAR:

There's plenty of stuff to please the eye with on cpluv's feed, like the best Beijing 2008 Olympics pictures:




n.-

stamp... stamp...

Even I noticed that I am not writing anything about Munich lately.
As I don't want to break the tendency, I will now deliberately avoid the subject and post another clip and guess what? It's ALSO from Sweden!

Back in Aus, I spent New Year at this doof, listening to Psy-Trance (whichever Techno deviation this style is...). As memories, I still got a scar on a finger knuckle to remember the night before and the voice of the people shouting at me to sit still, while blood dripped down my hand every time I wanted to help carry stuff (fresh scars are a bitch...).

While hosting Vivien, we exchanged some youtube clips and I have to admit that he knocked me down with a couple of his, one of them being this dance class gem:

I knew some general dance moves like the sprinkler, shoveling, the shopping cart... and even the ever magistral the cauldron, but the ones he shows are pretty adequate, mainly when on drugs. My favorite is Chernobyl child playing ping-pong:)

Keep on stamping, Leroy! You got the moves!

n.-

it's so bad and porno-corny that it just sticks

"oooohh... you touch my tralala...
my ding ding dong..."

Nobody like the swedes to create such a gem - Gunther, a guy everybody believes to be German, but who's in fact... swedish...

I have to shave, I'll leave the moustache on, get myself a pair of cool sunnies, a mullet and here I go, ready for Ibiza!!!

Kudos to Hagen for this... summer music revival:)


n.-

not too long ago, an Icelander told me "people are stupid"

As a general rule of thumb, this thought will protect you from disappointment and prepare you for the most stupid (re)actions from other folks.

Coming from the guys that brought us LOLCats and LOLdogs (???), here's a testimony to our ability (as humans) to surprise each other...

http://failblog.org

It's not even worth mentioning that its feed was almost immediately put into my RSS Reader.


n.-

I don't get sick of all the possible ways to play the music I have

Oooohhhh... this is so cool!
Some guy developed a little server-side media player - My NAS just yelled Gimme, gimme!!!.

I got it from here - http://musicbrowser.sourceforge.net/.
Unpacked it to my NAS' WWW home folder.
Edited index.php and had it point to the music files root folder.
Now, anyone accessing my network, just needs to browse to http://server/musicbrowser and voilà, directly play in the browser any available song.

I'm celebrating it with a dance to Vampire Weekend - A-Punk

keep on dancing and jumping

n.-

Picasa is getting a run for its money

Install, Try, Keep or Dump.
That's the summary of what trying out software looks like.

Vista has its own Photo Gallery but I took on to try Live Photo Gallery which has some more extra feats, like photo stitching.
Now, isn't the posted picture just a treat? It's at the small Feringa lake "just" 40-60 mins by bike form my place. I used the stitching aid feature from my IXUS 70 and stitched it all together with a couple of mouse clicks in LPG.

Ever since I started seeing how much greener the grass was on the other side of Picasa, I have been finding it easier to do the easy stuff (with LPG):

• import pictures from the memory cards (LivePG kicks serious ass here)
  
• rotate/improve some of them
• crop/resize for misc usage

Let's just say that I feel more and more a Mac user, getting that daily document/picture/music/video handling stuff sorted out quickly and without any (ie. much) hassle.

The only missing feature, uploading pictures to PicasaWeb.
The cool extra feature, uploading pictures to Flickr.


n.-

P.S.: been using ScribeFire to write the latest posts, still some bugs, but it's perfectly usable
P.P.S.: there's a new kid on the block, Pictomio (the name reminds me of the charming germano-italian insult "lecko mio"...)

Pure silent delight

People talk too much sometimes. I frequently talk too much.

This evening, a moment of silence, of pure delight was witnessed with no sound.
The five of us, after a delicious onions and ginger quiche, were almost done with the dessert.
The bowl of melted chocolate was arriving to its end. All the fruit had already been dipped into its chocolate dream and mouths had gladly tasted those simple duets.
Ice cream was the last victim to fall before this devilishly tasty, dark, hot, gooey and sweet liquid.
Jazz in the kind of this great "Take Five" was playing from my bulky and trustworthy music player.
At some point, nobody said anything, we all just gazed somewhere, probably nowhere at all, while the spoon slowly but surely went back up, carrying some chocolated ice to one's patiently open mouth.

I wish I had more moments like those. Being somewhere and not really anywhere. Being with other people and enjoying it with all of them, but still able to appreciate that singular moment independent and selfishly.


n.-

Bret and Germaine

Ladies and gentlemen, I present you the Flight of the Conchords. I've been watching their show but Theres just gave me a refresh with this clip - illustrates their humor pretty much!

Each episode has a couple of their songs but this one is just brilliant.

...
you're so beautiful
you could be a waitress
you're so beautiful
you could be a air hostess in the sixties...

Surely one of New Zealand's most brilliant exports

Again, kudos to Theres for her tip on this live gig video.


n.-

Building myself a tunnel and doing some "hash" on the side

Deploying OpenVPN (or another home VPN Server) is my new tech project. This old laptop lying around looks like the perfect host candidate (might as well do something more useful with it than just a book holder)

First step, get myself a linux distro (or just install XP). A quick search on www.distrowatch.com to find myself a Distro and here we go... (more about this in a couple of months...)

I am downloading a couple of ISO's within FF3, it allows to pause and resume downloads even between reboots. After pausing and resuming the download so many times, I am not sure the file is integer anymore. So, let's compare hashes.

I could not find any tool integrated into Vista to check for hashes, so after another search, here is a gem I need to recommend: Hashtab

• Install it.
• Integrate it into the shell
• right click on a file
• on the checksum tab, let it compute the hash
• in the meantime go get the SHA-1 or MD5 supplied by the source and when done, paste it into the underlying field
• click compare, voilá!
  

A little article about it on MyDigitalLifeStyle - link

The links:

• Download HashTab v1.11 for x32
• Download HashTab v1.11 for x64
• Official HashTab Homepage

A brilliant tool! (for whoever's concerned about file checksum check, about 1% of the active internet population)

n.-

the dancing nerds

This tune has been in my head for a little while and it just doesn't want to leave.
I could have discovered it earlier if only I had listened to the little amount of songs obtained from (the very busy) The Hype Machine.
I could have discovered it even earlier, had I known it was Converse's 100th Birthday theme - which reminds me I need some new shoes...

The video is ab-fab, no doubt about it!


n.-

A long nose and a pony tail

Everybody knows the IKEA PS VÅLLÖ watering cans.
According to this link, the designer, "Monika Mulder got with Vållö the award for Best Swedish Design 2002".

I wonder if she ever imagined the can to be used the way it was displayed at an optician in Munich.

reinventing/-using/-cycling design...


n.-

Mediamonkey, baby! You're not THAT expensive'!

New laptop (woohoo, Dual-Core 2.2GHz), new OS (Vista 64'f-in bits), new Mediamonkey installation.

Time to go up there and download it again. Now wait, what is this Trialpay?

Oh yes, instead of having to pay 19.95USD for a full MM License, I can get a partner service/product and they will "pay" for my license. I wasn't thinking of getting any of the offers until I noticed that VistaPrint is a partner.

So, after a couple of clicks to design myself a new visit-card and accepting to pay 7EUR for shipment, 250 brand new cards will soon be at my doorstep and I get a fully functional MM license!

n.-

[ UPDATE1: It's Windows only ]