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Archive for November, 2008
An evening at Sun Microsystems
Nov 28th
I just came back from London city, where I spent the evening at Sun Microsystems.
Sun held an event dedicated to scaling for startups. As scaling is something very interesting for Flosoft.biz, I popped into London and joined the event. A huge white building. A gigantic reception with one guy sitting behind it. Sun was the door on the left.
Inside I met up with Artur from Tigase who also joined the event. The evening then started off with a few talks from Last.fm and Sun. Here’s the Agenda of the evening.
18:00: Registration/Networking
18:30: Last FM
Why you should scale and lessons learnt
Mike Brodbelt
18:45: Sun Microsystems,
OpenSolaris- ZFS, Dtrace: Scaling and more scaling the easy way
Phil Harman
19:15: Break
19:30: Proven Scaling: MySQL
Optimise and Scale, now for the future
Mike Griffiths
20:00: Fav.or.it
Why I thought about scaling from day 1
Nick Halstead
20:15: Q&A Roundtable
20:30: Beer and pizza
I just love these events. There’s nothing wrong with Beer and Pizza. It’s a pity that the Pizza was gone quite quickly, about 3 slices a person, but I think that it wasn’t meant to substitute dinner. At this point, I would like to quote Alex: “The only thing that doesn’t scale well, was the Pizza”.
From this event I’ve learnt quite a bit about ZFS and Solaris, and will definetly play around with it the next few days. Also the MySQL scaling parts we’re interesting.
All in one, an interesting night.
50 skills every geek should have.
Nov 26th
If you are studying Computer Science, you should definitely read this. Take a pen and paper (or a small texteditor) and count your score. At the end of this, I would love to know what score you got out of the 50.
1. Install a hard drive in a laptop
2. Perform a clean OS install on a machine with two OSes
3. Swap out the battery on your iPod/iPhone
4. Jailbreak an iPhone
5. Wire your house for Ethernet and Coax cable
6. Use BitTorrent and RSS to automatically download new shows from trackers
7. Use an A/V receiver to its fullest capability (every port is taken)
8. Calibrate an HDTV without the manual
9. Use a DSLR in full manual mode
10. Hack the encryption and mooch your neighbor’s Wi-Fi
11. Solder cleanly enough to get around a circuit board
12. Use your 3G phone as a Wi-Fi access point
13. Shove the guts of a modern game console into a retro game console
14. Design a webpage in HTML by hand that features a picture of your cat
15. Use Photoshop to imperceptibly doctor a photo
16. Abstain from buying extended warranties
17. Know where to buy cheap cables and accessories
18. Fix your parents’ computer over the phone without looking at a computer
19. Enter the Konami code
20. Comment on Engadget from your phone
21. Type quickly using T9 texting
22. Program a universal remote
23. Contribute code to the Linux kernel
24. Hide porn from your significant other
25. Avoid DRM on everything
26. Know how to back up your data to networked storage—and actually do it
27. Watch TV shows on the internet for free
28. Edit together digital video ripped from YouTube
29. Play any SNES game on your computer through an emulator
30. Reset expired trial software by messing with the registry
31. Hackintosh your PC
32. Download pre-release movies from Usenet / Torrents
33. Hack the Wii to play homebrew games
34. Get around web content filters on public computers
35. Get into a Windows computer if you forgot your password
36. Securely erase your data so it can’t be recovered
37. Share a printer between a Mac and a PC on a network
38. Build a fighting robot
39. Write your own Firefox plugins
40. Navigate and reorganize the files on your computer in DOS / Bash
41. Get something on the front page of Digg
42. Get through to executive customer service
43. Rip a CD to lossless quality AAC or FLAC
44. Rip a DVD to DivX
45. Build your own computer from parts
46. Swap out the hard drive in your DVR for a bigger one
47. Get an NES cartridge working again by blowing in it
48. Calibrate a 7.1 surround-sound system
49. Play downloaded games on a Nintendo DS
50. Talk about things that aren’t tech related
Feeling Sleepy? Get a NapBook!
Nov 23rd
GOooooooOD morning!
Do you feel tired? Do you have to live through some horribly boring morning lectures? Ofcourse you bring your laptop, but you always put the bag under the table or onto the seat next to you.
Those times are over! Now you have the NapBook. It allows you to sleep through lectures with the comfort of your nice pillow at home.
I am currently trying to get my hands on it, but it seems to be difficult as it’s sown and sold in Reykjavik. But as soon as I do, I’ll give you some more info on it. Until then, you just need to bring your pillow with you.
One question remains: Is there a black version?
Good night and sweet dreams,
Florian
A cool dog
Nov 12th
A few days ago, I found this picture of a dog. You have to admit, it’s a cool dog.
NSFW – Black Border Pictures
Nov 8th
I was over at a friends place, and he had tons of these funny pictures with the black border and white text. So I quickly got a copy of them because some of them are just too funny.
If you are at work, I wouldn’t click Read More. Some people might be offended.
If you are sitting at home, go ahead and click!
Time for Change.
Nov 8th
I am sure you have been following the US elections over the last year or so. Barrack Obama had his campaign slogan: Change. Yes we can.
Well, let’s look back 10 years or so, when the famous Budweiser commercial first aired.
Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.
Times change. So here’s the 2008 version of that commercial. Just click read more.
Spotify – It’s real magic!
Nov 8th
Evening guys,
for the last few days I wanted to write this post, but just didn’t get around to publish it.
Before you continue reading, you should of have read my last post about Spotify a few months ago: Spotify – Last.fm on crack!
Then there’s a small video about Spotify here:
Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.
A few days ago, I was sitting together with a few other CS students, and we got to talk about Music. I immediately showed off my favorite music player, Spotify.
- Ow, you use Spotify. Looks cool to play back your Music… Woow, you have a huge Music Library. How many Gigs is it?
- No idea, it’s not on my Laptop.
- Huh? It must be, it can’t be streamed off the internet. It plays instantly!
After 30 minutes of traffic dumping and analyzing, we all agreed that it’s magic! It’s not possible that you can play a song instantly and skip to any place in it without buffering! It defies the laws of the internet! Ping? Packet Routing? Delays? Spotify has never heard of it! It plays as quickly as my local iTunes!
So one of my friends decided to call up Spotify, who’s HQ are in London, so it was a local call 
We got a very nice receptionist, whom we asked about Internships. She clearly noticed that we loved Spotify and asked what we love so much about it.
- The Speed! It’s awesome!
- Heh, Yeah, we do that.
I mean, come on! A kind laugh! As if it would be normal. Let me tell you now, it’s not! So that evening, I remembered Peter Saint-Andre mentioning that he knew the CTO of Spotify, Andreas Ehn. He immediatly sent out a mail introducing me to Andreas, and I got a reply shortly after that.
In reply to my accusation that Spotify would be magic and package routing, he just had the following song: http://open.spotify.com/track/4ONTc23rNiTCBqP833K6rc
He also said the following:
Seriously, though, we’re not doing anything magic. Short buffers, lots of capacity, light-weight client application, light-weight streaming protocol minimizing the number of round trips (despite using TCP). And of course there is a local cache, but Spotify is pretty quick for stuff you’ve never played before, too. We do have a bunch of rather good developers.
The thing that I am missing in Spotify is some of the brand new music, and the possibility to see who added what to my collaborative playlist. For the rest the app is perfect! And I don’t say this often
I hope that I’ll meet Andreas Ehn at FOSDEM this year, as I seem to have missed it the last time.
The thing I don’t get, why ask for £9,99 per month for the Premium Subscription. It’s too much. The price Last.fm asks is decent. For 2,5€ I would immediately get a Premium Account. But as it stands now, I don’t see why I should pay that much for so little more.
At this point I just want to say two more things:
I’m sorry, but I don’t have any Spotify invites left 
So I can’t give out any free accounts anymore.
And second: Spotify definitely redefined music!
And now off to bed
But before I leave, I specifically asked, and I am allowed to post Screenshots this time.
New Media Player Installed.
Nov 8th
Hey,
I finally got around to configure my WordTube plugin.
Here’s a demo.
Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.
Google’s WHOIS is hacked!
Nov 3rd
Hey,
Someone had fun with Google’s WHOIS record. By registering all these other subdomains, you now get all the following.
Homer:~ florian$ whois google.com
Whois Server Version 2.0
Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.
GOOGLE.COM.ZZZZZ.GET.LAID.AT.WWW.SWINGINGCOMMUNITY.COM
GOOGLE.COM.ZZZZZ.DOWNLOAD.MOVIE.ONLINE.ZML2.COM
GOOGLE.COM.ZOMBIED.AND.HACKED.BY.WWW.WEB-HACK.COM
GOOGLE.COM.YAHOO.COM.MYSPACE.COM.YOUTUBE.COM.FACEBOOK.COM.THEYSUCK.DNSABOUT.COM
GOOGLE.COM.WORDT.DOOR.VEEL.WHTERS.GEBRUIKT.SERVERTJE.NET
GOOGLE.COM.VN
GOOGLE.COM.UY
GOOGLE.COM.UA
GOOGLE.COM.TW
GOOGLE.COM.TR
GOOGLE.COM.SUCKS.FIND.CRACKZ.WITH.SEARCH.GULLI.COM
GOOGLE.COM.SPROSIUYANDEKSA.RU
GOOGLE.COM.SERVES.PR0N.FOR.ALLIYAH.NET
GOOGLE.COM.SA
GOOGLE.COM.PLZ.GIVE.A.PR8.TO.AUDIOTRACKER.NET
GOOGLE.COM.MX
GOOGLE.COM.IS.NOT.HOSTED.BY.ACTIVEDOMAINDNS.NET
GOOGLE.COM.IS.HOSTED.ON.PROFITHOSTING.NET
GOOGLE.COM.IS.APPROVED.BY.NUMEA.COM
GOOGLE.COM.HAS.LESS.FREE.PORN.IN.ITS.SEARCH.ENGINE.THAN.SECZY.COM
GOOGLE.COM.DO
GOOGLE.COM.COLLEGELEARNER.COM
GOOGLE.COM.CO
GOOGLE.COM.BR
GOOGLE.COM.BEYONDWHOIS.COM
GOOGLE.COM.AU
GOOGLE.COM.ACQUIRED.BY.CALITEC.NET
GOOGLE.COM
To single out one record, look it up with “xxx”, where xxx is one of the
of the records displayed above. If the records are the same, look them up
with “=xxx” to receive a full display for each record.
>>> Last update of whois database: Sun, 02 Nov 2008 18:02:11 EST <<<
NOTICE: The expiration date displayed in this record is the date the
registrar’s sponsorship of the domain name registration in the registry is
currently set to expire. This date does not necessarily reflect the expiration
date of the domain name registrant’s agreement with the sponsoring
registrar. Users may consult the sponsoring registrar’s Whois database to
view the registrar’s reported date of expiration for this registration.
TERMS OF USE: You are not authorized to access or query our Whois
database through the use of electronic processes that are high-volume and
automated except as reasonably necessary to register domain names or
modify existing registrations; the Data in VeriSign Global Registry
Services’ (“VeriSign”) Whois database is provided by VeriSign for
information purposes only, and to assist persons in obtaining information
about or related to a domain name registration record. VeriSign does not
guarantee its accuracy. By submitting a Whois query, you agree to abide
by the following terms of use: You agree that you may use this Data only
for lawful purposes and that under no circumstances will you use this Data
to: (1) allow, enable, or otherwise support the transmission of mass
unsolicited, commercial advertising or solicitations via e-mail, telephone,
or facsimile; or (2) enable high volume, automated, electronic processes
that apply to VeriSign (or its computer systems). The compilation,
repackaging, dissemination or other use of this Data is expressly
prohibited without the prior written consent of VeriSign. You agree not to
use electronic processes that are automated and high-volume to access or
query the Whois database except as reasonably necessary to register
domain names or modify existing registrations. VeriSign reserves the right
to restrict your access to the Whois database in its sole discretion to ensure
operational stability. VeriSign may restrict or terminate your access to the
Whois database for failure to abide by these terms of use. VeriSign
reserves the right to modify these terms at any time.
The Registry database contains ONLY .COM, .NET, .EDU domains and
Registrars.
Homer:~ florian$
The fun Google must have right now.
