Viva la Music Revolution!

Source: thereifixedit.com

GREAT live!!

Kajiura Yuki (of course) on the piano.
11 different singers, without counting Kajiura, who also sings a couple of lines herself. One opera singer among them. They sing different lines each, it's not a choir.
Nice choreography - not complicated since they're also dancing, but nice.
What I didn't really like is the costume colors, but the overall result is still perfect.

Sajin no kanata he : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjjOkscoafg

I also like the instrumental version, Sand Dream : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45NJerPFls4 (not a live performance)

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Count!

Today I visited a webpage and saw this image:

At first, I thought it was a simple counter advertisement that looked like a countdown. But I was actually the 54321-th person to visit that webpage! Reloading it in a new tab showed a different number :D

What did you say? I should try the lottery today?... Nah, this kind of thing never works when you actually have something to earn from it. ☹

xkcd effect

After this xkcd.com comic strip :


we can see the effect :

ext3 on Windows

Some time ago, I needed to access one ext3 partition under Windows, so I searched for a driver.

The most popular one (by far) seemed to be http://www.fs-driver.org/ . However, I had no luck with that one. It was showing my partitions as unformatted (!) and I had to download a separate tool for diagnostics. After running the fsck that was needed, it turns out that it's not compatible with this particular disc's geometry - or something. FYI, it was a standard 250GB laptop HD.

Some more searching showed http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsd/ , which works like a charm. Its only "problem" is that it needs a reboot after you install it, but it won't tell you, so you must reboot your Windows after the installation even without being prompted.

Have fun :)

Insane ad

... And if you want to avoid getting stuck in traffic, you should buy a car with a more powerful engine?...

Seriously. People may not care about faster CPUs anymore, because most common application don't need CPU speed. I can understand Intel wants to convince them to buy fast CPUs. But... please... can't their advertisements be sensible?

Destructive art

I went to a modern art exhibition today. Many pieces of art had a destructive force, filled with fear or anger, giving you the impression that we ought to destroy everything and start over if we have to create a better world.

But why?

Personally, I love the world we live in. It may not be perfect, but we have many things that we never seem to appreciate - ok, not everyone does, but I bet that the readers of this article, as well as the creators of the aforementioned pieces of art, sure do.
We have a comfortable bed in a room.
We have some food in the fridge and some water to drink - and even a vast choice on what we'll eat.
We have heating for the cold days.
We have our hygiene, easy access to a warm shower, and access to medical care when we need it.
We have our education, however good or bad it may be, it's still better than not having it.
We have the freedom to go out, meet our friends, express ourselves and laugh.
We have the ability to write down our thoughts, start a chain mail that will get spread instantly, or write them down in a blog, and be heard by friends, as well as complete strangers.
We have the ability to produce some music, a short film, a piece of art, and promote it online, and know that anyone can find us and appreciate our creations.
We have a critical mass of people that will find creative, constructive ways to react to whatever they do not like, and fight for a better world.

However wrong our world may be, I think this is enough. And I love it. We shouldn't stop fighting for the best, but we shouldn't destroy all this either.

Texas Stadium Fail

Picture by: Randrage Submitted by: Randrage via Fail Uploader

Found on: http://failblog.org/2009/09/14/texas-stadium-fail/

No comments here, dear reader :)

Swine flu: don't panic!

I just found a link to a document with a lot of useful information about swine flu here : http://www.equipocesca.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/swine-flu-common-sense-7.doc

Quoting the abstract:

1. Swine flu is very contagious. But the severity of swine flu is much lower than the seasonal flu (the flu of normal winters).

2. Swine flu demands common sense and calmness, as for seasonal flu. Contact your physician only in severe cases, such as coughing up blood or significant difficulty breathing.

3. Medications for swine flu such as Tamiflu and Relenza do not prevent the disease, and they are not useful for treatment in healthy people, They have common side effects some of which are serious causing admission to hospital. These medications might be useful in severe cases, but this is unproven.

4. Vaccine against swine flu is experimental. Nobody knows how effective it will be in preventing the disease or how safe it will be.

5. Swine flu does not have any different consequences for pregnant women than seasonal flu.

6. Previous flu pandemics do not produce high mortality since we have had antibiotics to cure pneumonias which complicate flu. Previous flu pandemics have no “second wave” and if it takes place it is not likely to be more severe.

7. Health services must always take care of thousands of acute and chronic patients, and it is important not to waste time and resources for mild cases of swine flu.

I remember a doctor that I know having told me something similar not long ago. In short: don't panic, it's just a mild flu :)

And you thought Math is a universal language?

In Chinese, 5 is pronounced "wu", so 555 is like a crying sound. In fact, the Chinese use 555 like a :'( smiley.

In Thai, 5 is pronounced "ha", so 555 is like a laughing sound - and it's used instead of "LOL".

Go figure...

The most awesome tools on internet

http://www.dabbleboard.com/ - Looks like a whiteboard - a collaborative one - which automatically recognizes basic shapes - just take a look at it!!

http://www.tiddlywiki.com/ - A calendar and a notebook, with pluggable modules... your data and your pluggable modules, ALL in one file!!

PS: I configured Blogger to email me when there are pending comments awaiting moderation. It did.... as soon as I logged on, about a month after the comment was left, and when I had already seen the comment request on the home page anyway... are they serious? So let me warn you, if you leave me a comment and it keeps appearing as "pending moderation ", you know what the problem is! :)

Straight-"forward" whining

The mail forwarding system has been supported in the SMTP protocol for decades. Really. Do I ask for too much if I want to just use it?

First of all, you don't really have that much of a choice on your IM service. It has to be the one most of your friends use. So I had to use Windows Live, whether I like it or not. I didn't want to give them my primary email address, so I registered for a free Hotmail one - I just didn't want the mails, so I kept telling everyone "don't email me on Hotmail please, use that other address instead". In vain. Some of them had my other address even before we started chatting on Messenger, but they'd just switch to Hotmailing me... So it was just natural that I wanted to start forwarding it. Alas, I only have the option to forward to other Windows Live addresses... I then thought of using Gmail's POP fetcher and then use Gmail's forwarding - but POP wasn't available either, until very recently! (In fact, it's only available in a few countries, but you can change that in your settings no matter where you live, right?) So I was basically stuck with the stupid web interface...

Another story: For some irrelevant reason (ask me if you're curious), I was stuck with receiving a weekly magazine I was barely interested in. With some luck, it would end up in the WC closet, for those times when you're looking for something to read. With less luck, it went straight to the recycle bin. Trying to save the Amazon forest from greedy magazine enforcers, I was informed that I could just sign up for their free email service and opt to receive the magazine by email instead. So I did - I signed up, then looked for the forward option. I even emailed them about it. "No, email forwarding is not supported". Sigh... Fortunately, they do support POP... but imagine my frustration when yet another issue of the magazine arrived... sorry, little tree, I did my best to save you... I'm a good kitty...

... am I?