I have a fancy camera (analog), and a less fancy digital. With the fancy analog camera, if I want to take a family photo, I press the button. At most, I need to hit the clearly marked flash button to turn it on. Of course, if I'm feeling artistic, I may want to adjust the exposure, shutter speed, etc., and those features are all there. However, to simply to the most common operation, take a picture, I don't need to do anything.
Your attitude is elitist, "if you don't want the fancy features, get a disposable camera." Beyond the fact that disposables get expensive real fast, what if I want to have a single camera and be able to take real photos AND snapshots?
The point of the article is that the simple should be simple. If I want to take a picture, I press a button.
Last I checked, one shot picture taking *was* just that simple, on every digital camera. You don't have to set all the options. On my Canon Powershot G2, for example, if you have it in the Auto mode (the default mode) you press the button and it takes a picture. Even the flash is in automatic mode by default. Done and done.
You might get poor pictures if you don't mess with the options, but that's true with even film type cameras (more true with film type cameras, in fact, since digital cameras have a lot more auto-correction capabilities, not to mention all the software auto-correction that exists).
Buy a PS/2 to AT style keyboard adapter. Take a 10K ohm resistor. Shove it into pin-holes 4 and 5 on the AT side of the connection (these are the two "middle" pins when looking at it vertically). Plug it into the system. Boot.
Works on most motherboards. Occassionally you'll find one it won't work with, but with the vast majority of them it works fine.
To a degree. The digital cable box I have has all that "On Demand" capability to do PPV movies and such, but it also has 30 channels or so, each devoted to a single network. Think "HBO On Demand" and "Showtime On Demand" and such, but extend it to "NBC On Demand" or "Fox On Demand". Or even to basic cable, what with Discovery, SciFi, and even Cartoon Network and Anime on demand channels.
Anyway, you pick your channel, and pretty much every series episode that channel has shown in the last year shows up. Usually the last 3-4 movies of the week show up on there too. Hit Play, and it begins after about a 15 second delay. It also has FF and RW buttons, which strangely enough seem to send a message back to the head end to do the FF'ing or RW'ing.. Good quality too, but then it is standard NTSC TV, so that's not particurlarly hard to do. There is some minor artifacting, but it's very good compression nonetheless.
There are also HD On Demand channels on there, but I lack HD at the moment.
Torx screws are not common in the home use world, but any hacker worth his salt has a set of Torx bits for his screwdriver. He may even have a set of "security Torx" bits, which is basically a torx head with a hole drilled in the center. The screw has a shaft sticking out of the middle of it, and the hole in the bit fits over that. Normal Torx bits won't go into the security Torx screws, because of the shaft sticking out. Security Torx was created simply because so many people started getting into things with Torx screws.:)
And those ramp ones are easy, it's just a matter of pressure. See, the ramps are rarely smoothed out entirely, and a little pressure can often be used to break it free. Once it's broken free, the ramps fit the fingers rather nicely and it's out easily.
Lately I've been seeing no head screws, which have me baffled. They're screws that look a lot like a rivet. I'm at a loss to understand how they get them in there. Removing them is easy though, just a pair of hardened needlenose pliers and a steady hand.
That actually works fine if you have the liberty of only needing to focus on one thing, or one thing that you deem important. It helps me (I can only speak for myself) to have a system when I have many things to do. So, when it's "I want to do this and this and this and this" etc, then it's a method for focusing on one thing while being able to take your mind off the rest, and I (and many others) find that helpful. That's all.
I grant you that if it works for you then it works for you, I'm simply trying to understand why it's necessary for you... If it helps you to focus, that's good, but the emphasis seemed to be more on memory, and the memory aspect I don't understand. I might forget my own phone number (I never call it, so why would I need to remember it?;) ), but my goals? The things I'm planning to do later that day/week/year/lifetime? I just can't see that happening, really, and I'm trying to understand it, sort of thing.
Sorry pal, but I haven't had any "homework" for over 10 years. I have a job, I make big phat cash, and I have a lot of responsibilities. But thanks for the assumption, however I'm not a kid anymore and my days are not carefree. However, when you finish up your script-kiddie ways, and want to actually have a conversation without having to hide behind the AC moniker, let me know, yeah?
Okay then. I guess I simply can't grasp going through life without being able to remember everything I need to remember. I mean, you remember it, and that's it. It's not a particularly hard thing to do like lifting weights or something. Doesn't take any effort. I just can't understand how anybody could forget something that they wanted to remember, especially something that they wanted to actually do. Simply doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
I had in my office a mysterious phone socket, which didn't seem to generate a telelphone bill. This was long before caller id, so I had no way of finding out the number, so I used that one for outgoing calls and my own for incoming.
A side effect of this is that every incoming call on the mystery line was a wrong number.
I had a similar situation in my fraternity in college... We had a payphone that had no ringer or coin slot.. it would only take credit card calls. I found the number to it by dialing the local ANI code (how I figured that out is a whole other story), but I also worked out where the wire went and connected up the light in the "booth" to the line such that it would blink when someone called it. The main reason for doing this was so that we could get calls on that line. Easy hack. I didn't want to put in a ringer because the phone guy would get ticked at us about it, but he never noticed the blinking light.:)
In any case, I found out that we got a lot of wrong numbers on that line because somebody else knew the number as one that was "never answered" and gave it away to people all the time, appearantly. There was some girl that was appearantly using it to give to guys in bars and clubs and such. You invent your own way to mess with these guys heads, we probably used them all for that one.:D
In another case, after we rewired the building to have individual lines to the rooms, I was living in another building that had an interesting property on its phone number.. The number for the courthouse was something like 341-2345, which the number to our line was 364-1234, and both "341" and "364" were normal prefixes for that area. Meaning that if you dialed the number without thinking too much, you could dial the wrong prefix, but continue the number and get us instead.. Like if you dialed 364-12345. The upshot is that we got a lot of wrong numbers for people wanting to know how much the fine for their speeding tickets was. I mean a *lot* of wrong numbers, like at least 3 or 4 a week. Eventually, me and the other people in that building started giving out amounts of the fines and addresses to send the tickets to. Just random ones at first, then we'd tell them addresses of our friends, or the post office, or various buildings on the campus. Lots of fun. Gave the people grief about speeding and such.. Tell them that there was no fine, they'd have to go to jail for a weekend, just crazy stuff we thought up. It was all probably illegal though, as we were impersonating police officers.;)
I have been to Ford HQ on many occassions, I have sat at those desks (I was a contractor to Ford, kinda), I have answered those ringing phones.
This happens often enough to get really annoying. It's funny at first, but after the fourth time that day (usually from the same jackass who can't dial a damn phone), it's quite annoying.
Hanging up on them does no good either. They try to call back and misdial it again. It's sad, really.
in a short enough time that you can remember it all.
Have you had a wallop to the head? I mean, do you have no long term memory or something?
I have plenty of goals. And I remember them for as long as it takes. So I guess I'm missing your point here. I guess if you're not capable of remembering things, this sort of seminar advice might be more useful.
But the lack of a system to manage my work has caused me so much trouble in the past
Why not just *do* your work instead? All work management systems never have actually answered this point, for me.
When I want to get something done, I do it, and then it's done. It's really pretty damn simple here. I mean, if you have a lot of work to do, then wasting your time by writing down lists of what it is that you have to do seems pretty pointless.
I don't know.. Maybe it's just me, but I've got a frickin' ton of work, and the way I manage it all is that I do it and then I don't have it anymore. I never have had any problems with this method. Maybe I should write a book called "Getting Off Your Fat Ass and Doing the Shit You Need To Do" and make a fortune or something. I could steal Nike's slogan: "Just Do It."
In any case, I have everything I really want because when I want to do something, I do it, and then I'm done and I don't waste my time enumerating the various things I do in my life. Writing down everything you want to do is great, but totally useless unless you actually go and do them. All it does is make you feel like you accomplished something because it's just busy work. And if you do end up actually doing those things, then writing down what you were going to do was a waste of time, because you could have just gone and done them in the first place, no?
Now, to be fair, enumerating what it is you need to do may give you the kick in the ass you need to actually go and do it, and in that sense, it may be worthwhile for you. However, I don't need that kind of motivation. If I want to do a thing, I do it. What more motivation than "I want to do this" should a person need to actually go and do that thing? I don't understand it, that's all. GTD and similar method all seem useless, for me and my life and the way I do things. If they work for you, then more power to you.
1. IFRAME's. Essentially, you have a DIV layer that you load some HTML into which you then move around or something. Well, if the DIV has an IFRAME in it, it can be pulling random image off a webserver.
2. Randomized javascript function which puts different HTML in the div layer depending on the phase of the moon or what have you.
However, this is kinda moot as the vast majority of ad banners are now controlled server side anyway. The page you see is generated on the fly with php or asp or some other scripting method, so it's a trivial task to have the page call advertising.php to include a different ad on every page call. Now they simply put the ad generation code into the div layer creator code instead of the page itself. Bang, done.
Blocking ads like this generally takes a bit more ingenuity than just looking at the URL, but it's not really all that difficult to do.
Method 1: The most obvious way is to take a couple of flexible rubber wheels, mount them so that they are touching each other, spin one really fast using a motor (causing the other one to spin in the opposite direction), and then feed the CD between them. Instant CD shooter. -Advantages: Easy to build, works. -Disadvantages: The major problem with this method is that the accuracy sucks. Although you can get some amazing speeds, your CD is shooting flat, with no spin to it. So you don't get much in the way of distance. It tends to tumble in mid air and get a lot of drag.
Method 2: Spin the CD using a motor of type, then have it release the spinning CD into something that will shoot it directly (not using a spinning rotor mechanism like method 1). -Advantages: Spinning CD allows for a superb accuracy if you build the thing right. -Disadvantages: Hard as hell to construct. Essentially, you have to spin your disc up to speed and then shoot it using something with a linear motion. This means a spring or a spinning belt mechanism with some very critical timing (if you don't want to lose all your speed). This translates to a much lower muzzle velocity.
Method 3: My favorite Combining both of the above methods, we'll make a couple of rubber rotors which are one CD's diameter apart. The CD, when it enters, will touch both rotors, but only barely. We need a slide mechanism to keep the CD in the correct orientation as it enters, and to some extent exits, the launcher itself. Spin on the CD will be achieved by rotating the rotors at different speeds. -Advantages: Gets a high muzzle velocity as well as spinning the CD, giving a reasonably good accuracy. The track launch mechanism, with a bit of creativity, can be adapted to make it into a fully-automatic CD firer. Feed it a stack of CD's and it punches them all out in a burst.:) -Disadvantages: A bit harder to build.. Requires constructing a track for the CD to travel on, a couple of rotors that move at differing speeds (meaning either gearing/belts or two motors).
All of those moving div layer type of schemes basically rely on the javascript "setInterval" function to do their magic. If you have a proxy that can modify page content, set it up to change "setInterval" to something like "dontsetInterval" or some such thing. Break the code, in other words. The thing then stays offscreen because the code to move it onscreen never gets run.
There's very few occasions in which I want setInterval to actually work, and I just whitelist those when I happen to run across them.
Losslessness isn't an issue, since if I don't have an iPod I'd have to re-encode it to MP3 anyway, to use a flash player. Yesno?
Yes, with reservations. The AAC format (sans DRM) is supposed by several software applications (Winamp, foobar 2000, Realplayer, etc, etc), although you're correct in that I know of no current hardware players that support it. However, I suspect that some more hardware players may support it soon.
Going over to a friends place is sure a lot more convenient than burning a CD, yep, yep...
If you want to take the time and quality loss associated with burning a CD, feel free. I was just trying to relay a lossless way of doing things.
Considering the source is available, you're also quite free to make a version for your Mac that will work without an iPod. Assuming you can figure out how to get access to the DRM key on the Mac, which should be possible somehow considering iTunes can do it.
I suppose I could buy a box to run Windows on, and a copy of Windows, and... naeh, it'd cost more and do less for me than an iPod, and it sure wouldn't have the eBay value.
So, I assume you have a Mac? Well, that's your own problem then. But are you telling me that you don't have access to a Windows computer anywhere, at work, at home, at a friend's place... Frankly, I don't buy it.
Removes the DRM on the Protected AAC so that use of the file, outside of iTunes proprietary crap, is possible. Lets you back it up without the loss encurred by putting it on an audio CD.
Essentially, these all mess with the audio in some way. These are all by SRS Labs, BTW.
This is all my opinion, more or less. Quotes from SRS are found here: http://www.srslabs.com/ConsumerTechMonoStereo.asp
SRS - Sound Retrieval System Claims to be able to "retrieve the spatial information that is lost during ordinary audio compression from any stereo recording and restores the original three-dimensional sound field." Also claims to be able to eliminate the "sweet spot" and "isolate and restore the spatial cues and place them in the proper space relative to the direct sounds, such as a soloist or dialogue."
What it really does, as far as I can tell: It uses an algorithim to isolate the audio into various sets of frequencies, which it then amplifies on various speakers and introduces a slight time delay. The effect of this is to give a slight emphasis to various parts of the sound. In a 5.1 surround system, this will make it seem as if the various chunks of frequencies are coming from more specific parts of the room. This is a neat effect, but the truth of the matter is that you can't restore what isn't there. Not really. It's a trick that lets there appear to be spatial orientation on the sound, but the spatial orientation it gives is entirely made up. It's not really what it is supposed to sound like, and it's not "much closer to what the artist originally intended" as they claim. You think artists don't listen to their own work and talk to their sound engineers? The original source material you have in the player is what the artist intended because it's what you actually got from them. SRS is a neat trick, but not actually any better. It'll work on headphones, but works best in a 5.1 surround situation. On a 2 speaker scenario, the artifical delays it introduces really hurt the sound noticably.
WOW WOW claims to "dramatically improves the quality, dynamics, image field size and bass tones of digitally compressed audio file formats including WMA, WAV, MP3 files."
What it really does, as far as I can tell: It enhances a small band on the high end of the frequency spectrum, compresses the low end, then sticks the whole thing through a phaser to make it sound kinda deep and slightly echo-y (a phaser, for those not into audio, basically eliminates very specific frequencies.. whatever ones you have it set to... you can do all sorts of weird things with a programmable one, but it creates a pretty distinctive type of sound). On cheap ass speakers, this sort of thing can make it sound like your speakers are bigger, but the actual bass output suffers horribly on good speakers, and the echo type of effect is annoying as hell once you notice it.
TruBass TruBass claims to "produce the perception of lower bass tones and deeper, richer bass from products that contain small, medium or large size speakers."
What it really does, as far as I can tell: Basically it increases the Bass. What? You have a bass control? Well, TruBass does it better. Oh wait, no, it doesn't. It's using some kind of tricky harmonics deal to enhance the low end of the audio to make it seem louder without actually making it louder. In other words, TruBass will increase the *perception* of the bass without actually increasing the amount of bass there. The human ear is better at certain frequencies than others, and TruBass adds harmonics to the bass that increase those frequency ranges, increasing the amount of bass you hear. But it will not increase the amount of bass that you *feel*, which to me, is kinda the whole point of bass. TruBass will work best on small crappy speakers, in other words, where you don't expect to feel any bass anyway. And the distortion on the bass is pretty severe, if you have a song with good bass to begin with.
Then some woman decided she'd check my ID for beer (I'm creeping up on 30 if you don't mind. But hey, nice to feel under 21 again), in a manner which made me feel like I did something wrong.
In many states in the US, it's the law that they must always check your ID, period. Regardless of how old you look. So don't take it as a compliment, because the majority of the time, it's not.;)
However, it's been my experience that BB more often then occasionally won't have a rebate item on stock/shelves right when the store opens on the first day of the rebate sale. 3 cases where I've tried to get a rebate item (modem, HD, monitor) I'd get there and be the first few when the doors open only to find the item NOT on the shelf. Ask a salesperson and they'll say there's no more in stock. When questioned about the promotion, it's the usual B.S. "The item has been on sale for the past week, so we ran out".
In point of fact, this is usually the case on any good priced sale item. I've seen it time and time again. I worked at Best Buy back in the late 90's, and this *always* happened. The real reason is that the items simply did not arrive on the truck. They have a scheduling system whereby the items in question either arrive a week early or fail to arrive until three days after. Usually three days after the sale starts. Understand that a) the circulars are printed on a national or regional basis, not on a store basis and b) the stores get them about 1 day before the sale itself. So half the time when an item was a good sale item, we wouldn't actually have the item in stock because it hadn't shown up on the truck yet. Invaribly there would be customers complaining about "bait and switch" or other tactics being used, and the only response we could give was "What the fuck do you want us to do? The item has not shown up at the store yet. I can't sell you what we don't fuckin' have." Best I could do was offer a raincheck at that point.
Whether this is intentionally planned or just the result of shitty planning in terms of truck arrivals, I never did find out. But it happened like clockwork, on at least one or two really good deals in every sale. Usually in the computer stuff, which is why I dealt with it so much.
Oh, it'd be perfectly visible. Yes, the fiber is small, but it will take several billions or trillions of them together to lift anything of any substantial weight. Don't kid yourself, the cable would be several feet in diameter.
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See, this is where you missed his point.
I have a fancy camera (analog), and a less fancy digital. With the fancy analog camera, if I want to take a family photo, I press the button. At most, I need to hit the clearly marked flash button to turn it on. Of course, if I'm feeling artistic, I may want to adjust the exposure, shutter speed, etc., and those features are all there. However, to simply to the most common operation, take a picture, I don't need to do anything.
Your attitude is elitist, "if you don't want the fancy features, get a disposable camera." Beyond the fact that disposables get expensive real fast, what if I want to have a single camera and be able to take real photos AND snapshots?
The point of the article is that the simple should be simple. If I want to take a picture, I press a button.
Last I checked, one shot picture taking *was* just that simple, on every digital camera. You don't have to set all the options. On my Canon Powershot G2, for example, if you have it in the Auto mode (the default mode) you press the button and it takes a picture. Even the flash is in automatic mode by default. Done and done.
You might get poor pictures if you don't mess with the options, but that's true with even film type cameras (more true with film type cameras, in fact, since digital cameras have a lot more auto-correction capabilities, not to mention all the software auto-correction that exists).
Buy a PS/2 to AT style keyboard adapter. Take a 10K ohm resistor. Shove it into pin-holes 4 and 5 on the AT side of the connection (these are the two "middle" pins when looking at it vertically). Plug it into the system. Boot.
Works on most motherboards. Occassionally you'll find one it won't work with, but with the vast majority of them it works fine.
To a degree. The digital cable box I have has all that "On Demand" capability to do PPV movies and such, but it also has 30 channels or so, each devoted to a single network. Think "HBO On Demand" and "Showtime On Demand" and such, but extend it to "NBC On Demand" or "Fox On Demand". Or even to basic cable, what with Discovery, SciFi, and even Cartoon Network and Anime on demand channels.
Anyway, you pick your channel, and pretty much every series episode that channel has shown in the last year shows up. Usually the last 3-4 movies of the week show up on there too. Hit Play, and it begins after about a 15 second delay. It also has FF and RW buttons, which strangely enough seem to send a message back to the head end to do the FF'ing or RW'ing.. Good quality too, but then it is standard NTSC TV, so that's not particurlarly hard to do. There is some minor artifacting, but it's very good compression nonetheless.
There are also HD On Demand channels on there, but I lack HD at the moment.
Torx screws are not common in the home use world, but any hacker worth his salt has a set of Torx bits for his screwdriver. He may even have a set of "security Torx" bits, which is basically a torx head with a hole drilled in the center. The screw has a shaft sticking out of the middle of it, and the hole in the bit fits over that. Normal Torx bits won't go into the security Torx screws, because of the shaft sticking out. Security Torx was created simply because so many people started getting into things with Torx screws. :)
And those ramp ones are easy, it's just a matter of pressure. See, the ramps are rarely smoothed out entirely, and a little pressure can often be used to break it free. Once it's broken free, the ramps fit the fingers rather nicely and it's out easily.
Lately I've been seeing no head screws, which have me baffled. They're screws that look a lot like a rivet. I'm at a loss to understand how they get them in there. Removing them is easy though, just a pair of hardened needlenose pliers and a steady hand.
That actually works fine if you have the liberty of only needing to focus on one thing, or one thing that you deem important. It helps me (I can only speak for myself) to have a system when I have many things to do. So, when it's "I want to do this and this and this and this" etc, then it's a method for focusing on one thing while being able to take your mind off the rest, and I (and many others) find that helpful. That's all.
;) ), but my goals? The things I'm planning to do later that day/week/year/lifetime? I just can't see that happening, really, and I'm trying to understand it, sort of thing.
I grant you that if it works for you then it works for you, I'm simply trying to understand why it's necessary for you... If it helps you to focus, that's good, but the emphasis seemed to be more on memory, and the memory aspect I don't understand. I might forget my own phone number (I never call it, so why would I need to remember it?
Sorry pal, but I haven't had any "homework" for over 10 years. I have a job, I make big phat cash, and I have a lot of responsibilities. But thanks for the assumption, however I'm not a kid anymore and my days are not carefree. However, when you finish up your script-kiddie ways, and want to actually have a conversation without having to hide behind the AC moniker, let me know, yeah?
Okay then. I guess I simply can't grasp going through life without being able to remember everything I need to remember. I mean, you remember it, and that's it. It's not a particularly hard thing to do like lifting weights or something. Doesn't take any effort. I just can't understand how anybody could forget something that they wanted to remember, especially something that they wanted to actually do. Simply doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
Sorry for asking.
I had in my office a mysterious phone socket, which didn't seem to generate a telelphone bill. This was long before caller id, so I had no way of finding out the number, so I used that one for outgoing calls and my own for incoming.
:)
:D
;)
A side effect of this is that every incoming call on the mystery line was a wrong number.
I had a similar situation in my fraternity in college... We had a payphone that had no ringer or coin slot.. it would only take credit card calls. I found the number to it by dialing the local ANI code (how I figured that out is a whole other story), but I also worked out where the wire went and connected up the light in the "booth" to the line such that it would blink when someone called it. The main reason for doing this was so that we could get calls on that line. Easy hack. I didn't want to put in a ringer because the phone guy would get ticked at us about it, but he never noticed the blinking light.
In any case, I found out that we got a lot of wrong numbers on that line because somebody else knew the number as one that was "never answered" and gave it away to people all the time, appearantly. There was some girl that was appearantly using it to give to guys in bars and clubs and such. You invent your own way to mess with these guys heads, we probably used them all for that one.
In another case, after we rewired the building to have individual lines to the rooms, I was living in another building that had an interesting property on its phone number.. The number for the courthouse was something like 341-2345, which the number to our line was 364-1234, and both "341" and "364" were normal prefixes for that area. Meaning that if you dialed the number without thinking too much, you could dial the wrong prefix, but continue the number and get us instead.. Like if you dialed 364-12345. The upshot is that we got a lot of wrong numbers for people wanting to know how much the fine for their speeding tickets was. I mean a *lot* of wrong numbers, like at least 3 or 4 a week. Eventually, me and the other people in that building started giving out amounts of the fines and addresses to send the tickets to. Just random ones at first, then we'd tell them addresses of our friends, or the post office, or various buildings on the campus. Lots of fun. Gave the people grief about speeding and such.. Tell them that there was no fine, they'd have to go to jail for a weekend, just crazy stuff we thought up. It was all probably illegal though, as we were impersonating police officers.
I have been to Ford HQ on many occassions, I have sat at those desks (I was a contractor to Ford, kinda), I have answered those ringing phones.
This happens often enough to get really annoying. It's funny at first, but after the fourth time that day (usually from the same jackass who can't dial a damn phone), it's quite annoying.
Hanging up on them does no good either. They try to call back and misdial it again. It's sad, really.
in a short enough time that you can remember it all.
Have you had a wallop to the head? I mean, do you have no long term memory or something?
I have plenty of goals. And I remember them for as long as it takes. So I guess I'm missing your point here. I guess if you're not capable of remembering things, this sort of seminar advice might be more useful.
But the lack of a system to manage my work has caused me so much trouble in the past
Why not just *do* your work instead? All work management systems never have actually answered this point, for me.
When I want to get something done, I do it, and then it's done. It's really pretty damn simple here. I mean, if you have a lot of work to do, then wasting your time by writing down lists of what it is that you have to do seems pretty pointless.
I don't know.. Maybe it's just me, but I've got a frickin' ton of work, and the way I manage it all is that I do it and then I don't have it anymore. I never have had any problems with this method. Maybe I should write a book called "Getting Off Your Fat Ass and Doing the Shit You Need To Do" and make a fortune or something. I could steal Nike's slogan: "Just Do It."
In any case, I have everything I really want because when I want to do something, I do it, and then I'm done and I don't waste my time enumerating the various things I do in my life. Writing down everything you want to do is great, but totally useless unless you actually go and do them. All it does is make you feel like you accomplished something because it's just busy work. And if you do end up actually doing those things, then writing down what you were going to do was a waste of time, because you could have just gone and done them in the first place, no?
Now, to be fair, enumerating what it is you need to do may give you the kick in the ass you need to actually go and do it, and in that sense, it may be worthwhile for you. However, I don't need that kind of motivation. If I want to do a thing, I do it. What more motivation than "I want to do this" should a person need to actually go and do that thing? I don't understand it, that's all. GTD and similar method all seem useless, for me and my life and the way I do things. If they work for you, then more power to you.
I can think of a couple of ways to do it..
1. IFRAME's. Essentially, you have a DIV layer that you load some HTML into which you then move around or something. Well, if the DIV has an IFRAME in it, it can be pulling random image off a webserver.
2. Randomized javascript function which puts different HTML in the div layer depending on the phase of the moon or what have you.
However, this is kinda moot as the vast majority of ad banners are now controlled server side anyway. The page you see is generated on the fly with php or asp or some other scripting method, so it's a trivial task to have the page call advertising.php to include a different ad on every page call. Now they simply put the ad generation code into the div layer creator code instead of the page itself. Bang, done.
Blocking ads like this generally takes a bit more ingenuity than just looking at the URL, but it's not really all that difficult to do.
Method 1:
:)
The most obvious way is to take a couple of flexible rubber wheels, mount them so that they are touching each other, spin one really fast using a motor (causing the other one to spin in the opposite direction), and then feed the CD between them. Instant CD shooter.
-Advantages: Easy to build, works.
-Disadvantages: The major problem with this method is that the accuracy sucks. Although you can get some amazing speeds, your CD is shooting flat, with no spin to it. So you don't get much in the way of distance. It tends to tumble in mid air and get a lot of drag.
Method 2:
Spin the CD using a motor of type, then have it release the spinning CD into something that will shoot it directly (not using a spinning rotor mechanism like method 1).
-Advantages: Spinning CD allows for a superb accuracy if you build the thing right.
-Disadvantages: Hard as hell to construct. Essentially, you have to spin your disc up to speed and then shoot it using something with a linear motion. This means a spring or a spinning belt mechanism with some very critical timing (if you don't want to lose all your speed). This translates to a much lower muzzle velocity.
Method 3: My favorite
Combining both of the above methods, we'll make a couple of rubber rotors which are one CD's diameter apart. The CD, when it enters, will touch both rotors, but only barely. We need a slide mechanism to keep the CD in the correct orientation as it enters, and to some extent exits, the launcher itself. Spin on the CD will be achieved by rotating the rotors at different speeds.
-Advantages: Gets a high muzzle velocity as well as spinning the CD, giving a reasonably good accuracy. The track launch mechanism, with a bit of creativity, can be adapted to make it into a fully-automatic CD firer. Feed it a stack of CD's and it punches them all out in a burst.
-Disadvantages: A bit harder to build.. Requires constructing a track for the CD to travel on, a couple of rotors that move at differing speeds (meaning either gearing/belts or two motors).
Have fun!
All of those moving div layer type of schemes basically rely on the javascript "setInterval" function to do their magic. If you have a proxy that can modify page content, set it up to change "setInterval" to something like "dontsetInterval" or some such thing. Break the code, in other words. The thing then stays offscreen because the code to move it onscreen never gets run.
There's very few occasions in which I want setInterval to actually work, and I just whitelist those when I happen to run across them.
Losslessness isn't an issue, since if I don't have an iPod I'd have to re-encode it to MP3 anyway, to use a flash player. Yesno?
Yes, with reservations. The AAC format (sans DRM) is supposed by several software applications (Winamp, foobar 2000, Realplayer, etc, etc), although you're correct in that I know of no current hardware players that support it. However, I suspect that some more hardware players may support it soon.
Going over to a friends place is sure a lot more convenient than burning a CD, yep, yep...
If you want to take the time and quality loss associated with burning a CD, feel free. I was just trying to relay a lossless way of doing things.
Considering the source is available, you're also quite free to make a version for your Mac that will work without an iPod. Assuming you can figure out how to get access to the DRM key on the Mac, which should be possible somehow considering iTunes can do it.
I suppose I could buy a box to run Windows on, and a copy of Windows, and ... naeh, it'd cost more and do less for me than an iPod, and it sure wouldn't have the eBay value.
So, I assume you have a Mac? Well, that's your own problem then. But are you telling me that you don't have access to a Windows computer anywhere, at work, at home, at a friend's place... Frankly, I don't buy it.
Ah, so I avoid the DRM on the protected AAC so I don't need to buy an iPod to listen to my iTMS purchases... by buying an iPod. Um...
Umm... you lost me there. You don't need an iPod to use Hymn.
hy does it work on headphones, but sound terrible on 2 speakers? Aren't 2 headphones just "two small speakers"?
Yes, but that's exactly what I said. It'll work on headphones, but it hurts the sound noticably. Was it confusing in some way?
www.hymn-project.org
Removes the DRM on the Protected AAC so that use of the file, outside of iTunes proprietary crap, is possible. Lets you back it up without the loss encurred by putting it on an audio CD.
Essentially, these all mess with the audio in some way. These are all by SRS Labs, BTW.
This is all my opinion, more or less. Quotes from SRS are found here: http://www.srslabs.com/ConsumerTechMonoStereo.asp
SRS - Sound Retrieval System
Claims to be able to "retrieve the spatial information that is lost during ordinary audio compression from any stereo recording and restores the original three-dimensional sound field." Also claims to be able to eliminate the "sweet spot" and "isolate and restore the spatial cues and place them in the proper space relative to the direct sounds, such as a soloist or dialogue."
What it really does, as far as I can tell: It uses an algorithim to isolate the audio into various sets of frequencies, which it then amplifies on various speakers and introduces a slight time delay. The effect of this is to give a slight emphasis to various parts of the sound. In a 5.1 surround system, this will make it seem as if the various chunks of frequencies are coming from more specific parts of the room. This is a neat effect, but the truth of the matter is that you can't restore what isn't there. Not really. It's a trick that lets there appear to be spatial orientation on the sound, but the spatial orientation it gives is entirely made up. It's not really what it is supposed to sound like, and it's not "much closer to what the artist originally intended" as they claim. You think artists don't listen to their own work and talk to their sound engineers? The original source material you have in the player is what the artist intended because it's what you actually got from them. SRS is a neat trick, but not actually any better. It'll work on headphones, but works best in a 5.1 surround situation. On a 2 speaker scenario, the artifical delays it introduces really hurt the sound noticably.
WOW
WOW claims to "dramatically improves the quality, dynamics, image field size and bass tones of digitally compressed audio file formats including WMA, WAV, MP3 files."
What it really does, as far as I can tell: It enhances a small band on the high end of the frequency spectrum, compresses the low end, then sticks the whole thing through a phaser to make it sound kinda deep and slightly echo-y (a phaser, for those not into audio, basically eliminates very specific frequencies.. whatever ones you have it set to... you can do all sorts of weird things with a programmable one, but it creates a pretty distinctive type of sound). On cheap ass speakers, this sort of thing can make it sound like your speakers are bigger, but the actual bass output suffers horribly on good speakers, and the echo type of effect is annoying as hell once you notice it.
TruBass
TruBass claims to "produce the perception of lower bass tones and deeper, richer bass from products that contain small, medium or large size speakers."
What it really does, as far as I can tell: Basically it increases the Bass. What? You have a bass control? Well, TruBass does it better. Oh wait, no, it doesn't. It's using some kind of tricky harmonics deal to enhance the low end of the audio to make it seem louder without actually making it louder. In other words, TruBass will increase the *perception* of the bass without actually increasing the amount of bass there. The human ear is better at certain frequencies than others, and TruBass adds harmonics to the bass that increase those frequency ranges, increasing the amount of bass you hear. But it will not increase the amount of bass that you *feel*, which to me, is kinda the whole point of bass. TruBass will work best on small crappy speakers, in other words, where you don't expect to feel any bass anyway. And the distortion on the bass is pretty severe, if you have a song with good bass to begin with.
I may give you 20% if you time the Tea refills so it does not destroy the delicate balance of Sweetner to Tea.
Go south, where you can order a sweet tea and never again have this problem.
Then some woman decided she'd check my ID for beer (I'm creeping up on 30 if you don't mind. But hey, nice to feel under 21 again), in a manner which made me feel like I did something wrong.
;)
In many states in the US, it's the law that they must always check your ID, period. Regardless of how old you look. So don't take it as a compliment, because the majority of the time, it's not.
However, it's been my experience that BB more often then occasionally won't have a rebate item on stock/shelves right when the store opens on the first day of the rebate sale. 3 cases where I've tried to get a rebate item (modem, HD, monitor) I'd get there and be the first few when the doors open only to find the item NOT on the shelf. Ask a salesperson and they'll say there's no more in stock. When questioned about the promotion, it's the usual B.S. "The item has been on sale for the past week, so we ran out".
In point of fact, this is usually the case on any good priced sale item. I've seen it time and time again. I worked at Best Buy back in the late 90's, and this *always* happened. The real reason is that the items simply did not arrive on the truck. They have a scheduling system whereby the items in question either arrive a week early or fail to arrive until three days after. Usually three days after the sale starts. Understand that a) the circulars are printed on a national or regional basis, not on a store basis and b) the stores get them about 1 day before the sale itself. So half the time when an item was a good sale item, we wouldn't actually have the item in stock because it hadn't shown up on the truck yet. Invaribly there would be customers complaining about "bait and switch" or other tactics being used, and the only response we could give was "What the fuck do you want us to do? The item has not shown up at the store yet. I can't sell you what we don't fuckin' have." Best I could do was offer a raincheck at that point.
Whether this is intentionally planned or just the result of shitty planning in terms of truck arrivals, I never did find out. But it happened like clockwork, on at least one or two really good deals in every sale. Usually in the computer stuff, which is why I dealt with it so much.
Oh, it'd be perfectly visible. Yes, the fiber is small, but it will take several billions or trillions of them together to lift anything of any substantial weight. Don't kid yourself, the cable would be several feet in diameter.