Interesting web stuff

Sharing what I find interesting

eirikso2 Comments

First, if you don’t know what RSS is you should read this.

Then, the cool stuff
Many bloggers post huge amounts of articles that are simple links to the interesting stuff they find around the web. I try to only post articles here at eirikso.com when I have something to share. More than a simple link. But I spend quite a bit of time reading other web sites and updating myself on new technology. A lot of the stuff I find is of high quality and interesting to share. But not enough for a separate article here on this blog. Here is the solution.

I am currently using Google Reader to keep track of the hundreds of web sites I try to check regularly. With Google Reader I can mark articles with “shared” to add them to a separate feed that I can share with my readers here at eirikso.com. In other words, a page with all the stuff that I find interesting enough to share with anyone that cares.

If you want to benefit from the hours I spend reading interesting blogs and web sites you can follow this site: Eirik’s shared items in Google Reader

Or add this feed to your RSS reader. Or simply check the dynamic list in my sidebar to the right. Just below “Recent Comments” you now find “Interesting from other sites”.

Sharing what I find interesting

Zcubes – do it all in your browser

eirikso5 Comments

I have been playing around with Zcubes for a couple of minutes. It’s in beta. It’s quite slow and it looks ugly. But, this baby lets you do quite a lot within the browser. At this point only Explorer 5.5 and above. So, if you’re in Explorer you can go directly to a test page here.

Or, read more about it over at Read/Write Web:

In terms of using ZCubes, the idea is that it allows users to create “experiences” – ranging from the creation of personal pages, greeting cards, posters, portals, research/academic papers and more. Making these experiences easy to use is also key, as noted in a recent ZCubes blog post – e.g. providing simple drag-drop based utilities.

ZCubes: Trying to “Do It All” on the Web

Zcubes – do it all in your browser

The celebrity oystercatcher

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Oystercatcher
If you are an oystercatcher and decides to place your nest on top of the science building of the university of Bergen you are up for some fame. A pair of oystercachers has decided that this is a good idea. They have been there several years and the very scientific people at the university distributed the hatching through a web cam last year. New this year is high quality live video streaming.

Due to the very long days during the Norwegian summer you will get quite nice shots even late evenings and early mornings. The picture in this article is from 10:42 PM.

The students and the people working at the university are serious about this, so both the webcam snapshot quality and the video streaming are of very high quality.

The eggs are estimated to hatch in the end of May / beginning of June. You’ll have to be there frequently because the kids leave their nest after a couple of days.

Link to the main page with web cam and instructions for the live streaming (english).

Link to a Norwegian article about the show.

Link to the wikipedia entry for oystercatcher

The live streaming is available on all platforms through the free VLC media player. Both as multicast and as unicast.

Digg this story here.

(Thanks to my mother for pointing me to this. Yes, my retired mother! Is that cool or what?)

The celebrity oystercatcher

Listen to eirikso.com

eirikso2 Comments
Illustration - Loudspeaker

Screenshot of Talkr button

Erling Sivertsen points me to Talkr. A service that can give you a computer generated audio version of RSS-feeds. From now on you will find a nice little button in my side bar that says “Talkr”. Copy the link from that button into your podcacher (iTunes or Juice or whatever), and you can start listening to eirikso.com. I don’t think eirikso.com is the best blog to listen to because I try my best to include visuals in addition to the text. Photos and illustrations. Still this is a cool service and could be very valuable for people with limited vision etc.

Screenshot of link- Listen to this

You will also find a little link at the end of all articles saying “Listen to this podcast”. Click it, and your browser will start reading the post for you.
And if you want to listen to a blog that has no “Talkr”-button, you can sign up for a free account with Talkr and add up to three RSS-feeds for your own. They also have a paid service that let you add more feeds. Quickly clicking around at the help pages did not give me any information about what languages they support. My guess is that the service at this point only support English feeds.

…and a small note about the name – “Talkr”. Please guys! Just because Flickr spelled their name in a cool way that is impossible to pronounce you don’t have to do the same. Throwing in an “r” in the end of your name does not mean that VCs will run for the money.

Listen to eirikso.com

ROFL! The n00b got a BSOD on his HTPC

eirikso5 Comments
BSOD HTPC

Or in plain english:
Rolling on the floor lauging! The inexperienced user got a serious error on his home theatre personal computer.

People keeps asking. And a while ago I realised that my mother is reading this blog. She wasn’t the one requesting this little roundup of strange computer geek language but I have a feeling that she will be one of the persons learning a couple of new abbreviations from this article.

There is no point for me to give something of a complete guide to internet language. I’ll explain a couple of the abbreviations I have used here on eirikso.com and lead you to some excellent recources in the end of this article. Here we go:

HTPC – Home Theatre PC. A computer that is tailored for media playback. Very often built to stay in the living room besides amplifiers, DVD players, VHS players and other audio and video equipment. And, regarding the DVD players and VHS players the HTPC is very often replacing them, not sitting there besides them.

IMHO – In My Humble Opinion

LOL – Laughing Out Loud

ROFL – Rolling on the floor laughing (laughing even more than when you laugh out loud)

BSOD – Blue Screen Of Death. The blue screen that a Windows computer will give you when something goes seriously wrong. Usually the most horrible error message of them all. Very often connected to complete hardware failures.

NSFW – Not Safe For Work. “This link is NSFW“. Used to indicate that the content might be offensive. So far the closest thing you get to something that is NSFW on eirikso.com would be this. (…ouch. Did I mention that my mother reads this blog?)

WTF? – What the fuck? Hmm. Maybe one of the words there is NSFW?

w00t! – Something like WOW!, Fantastic!, Yippeeee! Difficult to translate directly, and a part of the very advanced l33t-language. Read the complete explanation of w00t here. Yes, you write w00t using the number zero instead of the letter “o” and l33t using the number three instead of “e”.

OMG – Oh My God

n00b – Newbie. An inexperienced user. “I am a n00b, please be gentle. ”

RTFM – Read The Fucking Manual. If you ask a very stupid question in a forum you sometimes could get a simple RTFM as the answer.

The list goes on. You find one of the most complete lists of internet slang on Wikipedia. Together with the Urban Dictionary you should be covered.

And yes, the fact that my retired mother actually reads this makes me proud of her. 🙂 …problem is that before I know it she’ll start commenting on my bad english.

ROFL! The n00b got a BSOD on his HTPC

The web page that eventually will show every picture possible

eirikso2 Comments
Everything possible

In May 2005 I posted an article that described an insane, yet slightly interesting supposition: Everything you would ever want to see

To put it short:
Make a computer program that renders all pictures possible within a given limitation. Store them on a hard drive and you would have a repository of all footage necessary to make any movie or TV show that will ever be made.

The article is one of my most popular so far. If you look through the comments you will find a lot of suggestions and attempts on making such a program.

Now, half a year later I have recieved the best one so far. Paul has made a page with a 64 x 64 greyscale frame. It is possible to create 2^1048576 pictures in that frame.

The frame will start with a black pixel up in the left corner and “count” up to the last picture as people visit the page. At some point something interesting will show up. A picture of the American president somewhere you have never seen him before. A picture of you somewhere you have never seen yourself before. Well, in a couple of million years everything possible will have been displayed at this page…

The web page that eventually will show every picture possible

Pandora – Music recommendation radio that works

eirikso5 Comments

I just started playing around with Pandora, a recommendation radio built on the Music Genome Project. Just wanted to share that this is the first time I have tried a recommendation radio that actually works and that actually recommends stuff that I like! After my first half hour of use it seems a bit US-focused, but I’ll have to try it out some more before I can jump to any conclusions.

This is a service that meets some of the most basic requirements for something that could be a hit:
1. It is easy to understand the concept
2. It is easy to use
3. The price seems right

Unfortunately, the sound quality is not perfect, but I guess that will be better as time goes by and the general quality goes up regarding network speed, cost of storage etc… Now, could you give me Pandora for my Media Center please?

Pandora – Music recommendation radio that works