....shutup it's a prototype :p

Wired: Rise of the Instapreneur

is the beginnings of....

Mallory by Leonard Richardson ......minus the all seeing AI system bent on enforcing copyrights....

I recently got into a discussion(argument) about the validity of having a blog to display topical information in an easy manner rather than just using a wiki.

My point being that the discussion tabs on a wiki are tedious to use and everything just runs together. The discussion tabs were not designed for presenting topical information so much as comments from other wiki users about edits to a project and aren't really suitable for proper discussion either. You wind up having to use nested bullets and leave timestamped signatures, which the user has to put there by clicking a button mind you rather than it being a transparent action.

The opposition has taken a few stances on the matter:

1. user1: "i simply like forums for discussions...those are my feeling"
2. user2: "the whole blog-in-a-wiki idea sounds rather lame too. we have discussion tabs and this irc channel"
3. user2: "there's slim to no chance of me using either a blog or a forum"

While I am inclined to agree with user1 that forums are good to discussion, I can't help but feel that they're antiquated. Merely an attempt by BBS folks to maintain an old tradition in a new medium that replaced them. Not to mention I know of no secure forum packages out there. In many ways the blog replaced the forum, but as someone else pointed out they do put more emphasis on the "first post" and less on comments. Given this, blogs are better at topical information, but less so for open discussion. We might have to bite the bullet and use both, a forum for open discussion and a blog for topical information. The wiki I believe should just be used for documentation.

As far as user2's notions, I would like to point out that they also don't use the discussion tabs on the wiki, so does it really matter. While antiquated, I like IRC and I think it's a valid method of realtime discussion with other people. It's problem however is data retention in a useful manner. Yes you can log it, but it's all text and not as easy to search through as a blog or forum would be. IRC might be a good way of keeping the flames out on the forum though, who knows.

Keep in mind that all this was over IRC.

Link: http://strages.net/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=Proxima_DP1000x

The net used to be a different place back in the early 90s. A place where if you had the right permissions you could just up and change a page if you wanted, not unlike today's Wiki. Enquire, the first ever browser actually had an edit mode. While a grand idea in an ideal world, this fell out of favor as people forsaw ways of it being abused. The idea was all together dead by the advent of second generation WWW browsers like NCSA's Mosaic and Lynx.

I remember gopher and NCSA Mosaic was the first browser I ever used when our gopher connection in grade school was replaced with WWW access, but I had no idea that everything used to be writeable. I find the concept fascinating, and while I understand it falling out of favor, I truly wish it hadn't. Thankfully as someone once said, "everything old is new again." With the advent of blogging and excellent open source browsers like Mozilla and Firefox with it's extensions, people started taking the web back. Back from boring static pages that were hard to update unless you knew the underlying "programming" of HTML.

Here's a nice start for all you Firefox users out there who want to browse the web your way:

Greasemonkey: Lets you make scripts or download ones others have made in order to make a website look entirely different by adding or removing elements from it.

Platypus: A tool that lets you visually remove elements from a page by creating greasemonkey scripts for you!

Web Developer: Adds a toolbar that allows you to edit/disable numerous elements of a webpage, as well as check to see if it validates properly to current standards.

MyStickies: Allows you to add stickies to a website with notes for future reference. All notes are stored in an online account, so they'll be there if you change PCs and have the extension installed.

Link: http://aluminum.sourmilk.net/reveal/

Click the image for a larger one.


This is the neatest looking firefox extensions I've ever seen. Basically hitting F2 brings up a bar containing thumbnails of every tab you have open, and don't worry it scrolls horizontally by clicking and dragging for when you have a lot of them open. You can jump to any tab, just by clicking on the thumbnail of it, and it also lets you drag the thumbnails around to rearrange the order of the tabs. I recommend everyone giving it a trial run.

Link: http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=92396&highlight=tank

Cowboy Bebop reality = 1 part rocket racing league + 1 part privatized space transportation + 1 part efficient planetary travel


We're only missing the efficient planetary travel part people....

Link: http://tattoo.by/tattoo/palm_tattoo.html

5 new 200 gig harddrives + 1 existing 200 gig harddrive + windows xp = 1TB raid5 array

Windows xp with the modification of 3 files in one's system32 directory allows for software raid5 with no additional software.

C:\windows\system32\drivers\dmboot.sys
C:\windows\system32\dmconfig.dll
C:\windows\system32\Dmadmin.exe

dmboot.sys:
Before:
0000f1f0h: 74 00 54 00 79 00 70 00 65 00 00 00 57 49 4E 4E ; t.T.y.p.e...WINN
0000f200h: 54 00 00 00 53 45 52 56 45 52 4E 54 00 00 00 00 ; T...SERVERNT....

After:
0000f1f0h: 74 00 54 00 79 00 70 00 65 00 00 00 53 45 52 56 ; t.T.y.p.e...SERV
0000f200h: 45 52 4E 54 57 49 4E 4E 54 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ; ERNTWINNT.......

dmconfig.dll:
Before
00005140h: 4C 41 4E 4D 41 4E 4E 54 00 00 00 00 53 45 52 56 ; LANMANNT....SERV
00005150h: 45 52 4E 54 00 00 00 00 57 49 4E 4E 54 00 00 00 ; ERNT....WINNT...

After
00005140h: 4C 41 4E 4D 41 4E 4E 54 00 00 00 00 57 49 4E 4E ; LANMANNT....WINN
00005150h: 54 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 53 45 52 56 45 52 4E 54 ; T.......SERVERNT

dmadmin.exe:
Before
00001c30h: 73 65 72 76 65 72 6E 74 00 00 00 00 6C 61 6E 6D ; servernt....lanm
00001c40h: 61 6E 6E 74 00 00 00 00 50 72 6F 64 75 63 74 54 ; annt....ProductT

After
00001c30h: 77 69 6E 6E 74 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 6C 61 6E 6D ; winnt.......lanm
00001c40h: 61 6E 6E 74 00 00 00 00 50 72 6F 64 75 63 74 54 ; annt....ProductT

1. Replace the old ones using windows xp recovery console, and wala! Make sure to copy the files to \windows\system32\dllcache as well as their original locations otherwise ntfs file protection will put the old ones right back.
2. Reboot into windows.
3. Open management console.
4. Go to disk management.
5. Make sure all the drives to be used are made dynamic.
6. Right click on one of them.
7. Create new volume.
8. Choose RAID-5 and click next.
9. Select the drives to be used and click next.
10. Assign a drive letter.
11. Do a quick NTFS format
12. Bask in the 1TB drive properties for 30 seconds.
13. Load it up!

TargetAlert: This one is pretty slick I gotta say. It puts little icons next to links on a webpage to let you know when they're a pdf for instance or an e-mail address.


Tabbrowser Preferences: Adds a section under preferences that lets you control how tabs operate in Firefox. No more links opening in new windows if you so desire, they'll open in new tabs, and you can choose whether load them in the background or not.


FxIF: Adds the ability to read the extra info added by digital cameras to images by right clicking on the image and going to properties. Usually only works on the original image and not resized ones.


Greasemonkey: This extension works off of user scripts for any given site that will alter it's appearance or the way it functions for a better browsing experience. As you can see in the example pic, I can now alter serveral things in Google Maps by using this script. There is also a handy guide on how to use it.


GooglePreview: Adds little thumbnail views taken from Alexa next to your Google search results.


ColorZilla: This is an absolute must for anyone who does webdesign! It adds an eyedropper icon to the left side of the browser status bar, that when clicked, lets you hover over anything in a webpage and gives you the color(decimal or hex), coords, and CSS element of that item/section.


NoScript : Does the same thing the default popup blocker in Firefox does, only for javascripts. It only lets javascripts from trusted websites run, which solves many of the recent exploits and those occasional stray popups affecting Firefox as of late.

Link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/getthebetas/country/

Free as in beer with free as in beer shipping within the US and Canada.