Category: Geek

Heavypedia?

…or at least a bit heavier:

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that allows anyone to contribute articles, is tightening its rules for submitting entries following the disclosure that it ran a piece falsely implicating a man in the Kennedy assassinations. Wikipedia will now require users to register before they can create articles, Jimmy Wales, founder of the St. Petersburg, Florida-based website, said Monday.

I just loved the way it worked – almost without (outer) control. Is it the end of the freedom of Wikipedia?

Jazz Is Not Dead…

iTunes as a hazard to the preservation of jazz:

The digital music era should offer listeners more information about jazz, not less. The stakes are high. If jazz fragments into millions of digital files, future generations could be left with a maddening cultural jigsaw puzzle. This music could quickly become one of the mysterious art forms that is translated to the public by a small group of experts.

Same goes for Zappa, I would reckon…

The Golden Ticket

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I entered my email at wordpress.com in hopes of getting an invite for a free WP-powered weblog. Lo and behold: today I received The Golden Ticket meaning that now I’ve yet another webpage to fill up with content! You’re sitting there thinking: “why should I give a fuck?” — well: wordpress.com works by invites only. And I just happen to have one. So if any of you out there fancy the idea of having your own weblog for free, drop a note in the comments. The account comes with all the goodies WordPress has to offer right out of the box. You’ll never hear vloerbedekking Blogger again! Any takers?

Update: Houdini has the golden ticket.

Oh, and I have about a 100 Gmail accounts to give away as well.

iPod, You Pod

Well today I could no longer resist the sheer beauty and functionality of the iPod, so I went and bought me one. Not the Shuffle (1Gb, ha!), nor the iPod nano (4Gb, haha!) and certainly not the iPod U2 (U2, hahaha!) — no, just the regular 20Gb white one.
Funny thing is you can have a phrase engraved on the back of it, which of course I couldn’t resist either. Free beer for the person who can guess what I had engraved on it… :)

Del.icio.us

Late to the party as ever, I’ve just started to play around with del.icio.us, the much praised “online social bookmarking service”. And that’s what it is, basically. You “bookmark” sites you come across, tag them with keywords (e.g. zappa), others get to see your bookmarks and can even subscribe to them. With a bit of hacking it’s also possible to have your bookmarks included on your own webpage (as I’m doing with my bookmarks over here). Does anyone else in the audience have a del.icio.us account they want to share with us?

About Time YOU Had A Dot Com

Dreamhost, the people that have been hosting KUR for almost 4 years now, have given me a $10 gift certificate that I can either apply on my own account or give out to someone else.
If anyone’s interested to sign up with Dreamhost using this $10 discount (and I can think of a couple, ahem), just drop me a note and we’ll work something out.

You’d think there’s a catch but really there isn’t. Their hosting rocks, their tech support is superb, they keep adding features, disc space and bandwidth to the point where it’s borderline absurd — all that starting at $7,95/month. So there you go. First come, first served.

Update: The gift certificate has been claimed. :)

I Spy With My Little iSight

iSight Sighting

… and there was much rejoicing as The Imaginary Publisher and The Good Doctor successfully installed the Apple iSight webcam!
Yes indeed folks: it is now possible for you to bust my balls about the wiki chatwise while looking me straight in the eye — provided you have a webcam and an AIM account. Ain’t technology a thing of wonder…

Burning That DVD

Burning That DVD:

The crux is, how does one go about burning a DVD. Are there burners that are better than others? Is a specific format required to produce a functional DVD? And what about software: is one package preferred above all others? Do DVDs from one side of the pond work well on the other side, or is this a function of your DVD player?

Feel free to chime in.