Today Customize Talk announced that it would be shutting its doors due to lack of updates to Google's instant messaging client Google Talk.
On August 24th 2005 Google Talk was launched. It has now been three coming up on four years since the official release and we still only have a windows client. In November 26th 2007 two years later group chat was finally added. Not much else has been added since then. There have been updates to the web based google talk clients, but none to the desktop application.
One has to ask, has the google talk desktop client been abandoned? Or have developers been pulled from it to focus on other products?
Showing posts with label General. Show all posts
Showing posts with label General. Show all posts
Monday, February 23, 2009
Friday, January 9, 2009
Court room puts evidence online
A Florida woman accused of killing her toddler daughter made a rare court appearance Thursday for a hearing regarding "disturbing" images of the scene where her daughter's skeletal remains were found.Reads the CNN news article on the Casey Anthony trial. The issue at hand is the defense wishes to send photo's to experts outside the state of Florida. There is a concern that said experts could leak these disturbing photo's to the media. As a software developer the solution they came up with baffles my mind.
The parties agreed that the defense would set up a secure Web site for its experts to evaluate the photographs.
Instead of hand delivering copies of these photos to experts that have signed confidentiality agreements, they are going to be setting up a 'secure' website that contains all of these photos. They then have to communicate to the experts in some fashion how to login to said website. If the prosecutors were concerned about leaking with a sneaker net, why is no one throwing a red flag about putting this stuff up on publically accessible webserver?
Thursday, December 18, 2008
The Used - Bird and the Worm
She asked what songs we would like covered. I requested The Used - Bird and the Worm. And she covered it!
Friday, December 12, 2008
Yahoo and MSN hate me
Google analytics is a great tool. It helps me track where my visitors are coming from. The vast majority of my traffic comes from search engines picking up my old posts. But not all search engines send me traffic. Really its just one, Google. So far in the month of December google drove in a whopping 94% of search engine traffic. I submit sitemaps to all three search engines and yet only google ranks me high enough to be noticed. Frustrating.
Friday, July 4, 2008
Nothing to see here, move along.
So, the creator of the svg benchmark left some constructive criticism on my last post. He made some very good point so I decided to go out and download all these browsers and run the benchmarks on the same machine. Because you can't really compare stats from different hardware. The updated results are below.
| Browser | CPS | MPS |
| Opera 9.21 | 719 | 1828 |
| Opera 9.51 | 1883 | 3205 |
| Firefox 2.0.0.15 | 914 | 1456 |
| Firefox 3.0 | N/A | N/A |
| Safari 3.1.2 | 2370 | 7092 |
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Opera 9.51 is FAST
Post publish notes:
All hail Opera 9.51 our new browser overlords! I ran the latest version of Opera through a SVG benchmark and was just about floored. The two things that it measures is shape creations per second and shape moves per second.
To give you a comparison here are the average results the author got for the various browsers:
The joys of hardware accelerated graphics. [It looks like Opera 9.51 isn't using hardware acceleration. It is something they are working on for a future release] With the release of Firefox 3.0, firefox now has the capabilities to use hardware acceleration for their SVG rendering. Please don't read that sentence wrong, as there seems to be some confusion in the community about this. The libary firefox uses to render SVG called Cairo supports hardware acceleration when coupled a backend called Glitz. But Firefox 3.0 is NOT coupled with glitz and thus has no hardware acceleration. There is an option to enable the glitz backend for cairo during the compilation of Firerfox 3.0. Don't try to build it though because as a bugzilla entry reveals it errors out. No one in the blogosphre has noticed comment #9 from Vladimir Vukicevic who states
So, the mozilla team has no plans on incorporating Glitz in the future. Does an alternative to Gltiz even exist? Does mozilla plan to write their own backend? These are currently open questions but don't hold your breath to Firefox performing as well as Opera until they make up their minds.
- The important thing you should take away from this post is Mozilla has no plans to include Glitz.
- The stats in this post has been proven useless. Better benchmark results.
All hail Opera 9.51 our new browser overlords! I ran the latest version of Opera through a SVG benchmark and was just about floored. The two things that it measures is shape creations per second and shape moves per second.
To give you a comparison here are the average results the author got for the various browsers:
 |
|
The joys of hardware accelerated graphics. [It looks like Opera 9.51 isn't using hardware acceleration. It is something they are working on for a future release] With the release of Firefox 3.0, firefox now has the capabilities to use hardware acceleration for their SVG rendering. Please don't read that sentence wrong, as there seems to be some confusion in the community about this. The libary firefox uses to render SVG called Cairo supports hardware acceleration when coupled a backend called Glitz. But Firefox 3.0 is NOT coupled with glitz and thus has no hardware acceleration. There is an option to enable the glitz backend for cairo during the compilation of Firerfox 3.0. Don't try to build it though because as a bugzilla entry reveals it errors out. No one in the blogosphre has noticed comment #9 from Vladimir Vukicevic who states
Chances are this will become WONTFIX -- glitz won't be the way forward for us
for OpenGL/accelerated support, and what little bits of code are in there right
now don't work very well (with or without build patches).
So, the mozilla team has no plans on incorporating Glitz in the future. Does an alternative to Gltiz even exist? Does mozilla plan to write their own backend? These are currently open questions but don't hold your breath to Firefox performing as well as Opera until they make up their minds.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Blog Changes
You may have noticed things look a little bit different. Mindjunk has upgraded from wordpress 2.3.1 to 2.5.1. We have switched to a new theme and reduced the amount of widgets. The end result being a much cleaner and simpler site.
Things may be chaotic for awhile as I play with all the new features.
Things may be chaotic for awhile as I play with all the new features.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Feed readers are terrible
I have a love hate relationship with RSS feed readers. Every once in awhile I try and get into them but end up getting frustrated and reverting back to just checking sites for updates. Whats the problem? Information overload. Like to check the top articles on Digg? Watch whats happens when you add digg's RSS feed to your feed reader. I didn't check it for ONE day and I had over a 1000 back entries. Add a couple more firehose sites and you have just created an information flood.
Using feed readers this way is obviously not ideal. Overtime and many attempts later I have discovered how to use feed readers so its not so overwhelming. A year ago I was trying to find a site to had news about recent events from Google. I couldn't really find it. I could find a handful of blogs that were covering happenings at Google. Also I found the collection of corporate blogs that google uses to communicate with the public. Instead of tracking these ~30 or so sites seperatly I decided to add them all to google reader. This setup worked perfectly there are only about 10-15 or so new articles coming in a day and each article hold interesting information that I want to read. Where before I was getting blasted with so much information 9 times out of 10 I could care less about what the article was talking about.
I hope this helps someone else tame the beast and happy reading.
Here is the short version. Rules for taming a feed reader:
* No aggregating sites such as slashdot, digg etc
* Only pick sites that have quality posts not links to posts with brief comments
* Limit the amount of feeds that you track
Using feed readers this way is obviously not ideal. Overtime and many attempts later I have discovered how to use feed readers so its not so overwhelming. A year ago I was trying to find a site to had news about recent events from Google. I couldn't really find it. I could find a handful of blogs that were covering happenings at Google. Also I found the collection of corporate blogs that google uses to communicate with the public. Instead of tracking these ~30 or so sites seperatly I decided to add them all to google reader. This setup worked perfectly there are only about 10-15 or so new articles coming in a day and each article hold interesting information that I want to read. Where before I was getting blasted with so much information 9 times out of 10 I could care less about what the article was talking about.
I hope this helps someone else tame the beast and happy reading.
Here is the short version. Rules for taming a feed reader:
* No aggregating sites such as slashdot, digg etc
* Only pick sites that have quality posts not links to posts with brief comments
* Limit the amount of feeds that you track
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Digg
Dear Digg,
Thank you for bringing 56.76% of the visitors to my little blog. I do not get much traffic and when I submit a story to digg no one diggs it or comments. But all that is okay because you still bring a whole lot of people over here to look at my posts.
So, Thanks for letting me pretend that people actually read this.
TrashHalo
Thank you for bringing 56.76% of the visitors to my little blog. I do not get much traffic and when I submit a story to digg no one diggs it or comments. But all that is okay because you still bring a whole lot of people over here to look at my posts.
So, Thanks for letting me pretend that people actually read this.
TrashHalo
Saturday, July 28, 2007
ANSI Screen Escape Characters
I am posting this so I can find it later when I need it. If you find it useful then awesome.
Examples:
echo '\033[31mHello World\033[0m'
\033[31m - Sets the text color to red.
Hello World - Prints 'Hello World' to the screen
\033[0m - Resets everything back to normal
echo 'XXXX\033[3DY'
XXXX - Prints XXXX
\033[3D - Moves back 3 characters
Y - Prints a Y
The output would look like 'XYXX'
- \033[ or Ctl-V,Esc,[ Starts a escape sequence
- m should be the last character in a sequence that sets font and/or background color
- a two digit number starting with 3 is for setting the font color
- a two digit number starting with 4 is for setting the background color
- the second digit of a two digit number represents the color
0 => black
1 => red
2 => green
3 => yellow
4 => blue
5 => purple
6 => cyan
7 => white - a single digit number represents a text style
0 => reset
1 => bold
3 => italics
4 => underline
5 => blink
7 => reverse
8 => invisible - cursor movement starts with a number which represents the number of characters to move and ends with a capital letter representing the direction
A => up
B => down
C => right
D => left - to move the cursor to a specific location it requires column number then a ; then the row number and ends with the letter H
- to clear the screen and move the cursor to the home position it requires the number 2 and the capital letter J
Examples:
echo '\033[31mHello World\033[0m'
\033[31m - Sets the text color to red.
Hello World - Prints 'Hello World' to the screen
\033[0m - Resets everything back to normal
echo 'XXXX\033[3DY'
XXXX - Prints XXXX
\033[3D - Moves back 3 characters
Y - Prints a Y
The output would look like 'XYXX'
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Inkscape
I have recreated one of my favorite avatars in inkscape. The original image was from the anime Dragon-Half. This is not a autoconvert of the original image but is hand drawn. My svg image is public domain so if you like it use it!
(svg)
Edit: I just finished a new version. I started over and drew it a layer at a time and that kicked off 20kb from the svg image and it now looks much closer to the original.
Original | SVG Version |
(svg)
Edit: I just finished a new version. I started over and drew it a layer at a time and that kicked off 20kb from the svg image and it now looks much closer to the original.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Mindjunk is now super fast
Lately Wordpress has slowed down greatly. It was taking well over 100 seconds to load pages. I tried a bunch of different solutions: disabling plugins, using a stripped down theme, converting the database tables to InnoDB. Nothing seemed to help. Then I noticed something. The wp_postmeta table had ballooned to over 52,000 records. I was able to figure out it was Ultimate Tag Warrior that had caused this. I enabled UTW and used the "Tidy Tags" feature and wp_postmeta went down to 28 entries. Now pages are loading in a fraction of a second. Needless to say I will not be using UTW anymore. I need to find a more efficient plugin to tag my posts.
I also want to say thanks to creators of my new theme , 281 , it is very fast and clean.
I also want to say thanks to creators of my new theme , 281 , it is very fast and clean.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Spam
Dear Chinese Spammers,
I do not speak Chinese. I am sure whatever it is you want to sell me is "amazing" but alas I have no idea what you are talking about.
Sincerely,
TrashHalo
Monday, September 18, 2006
RSS Readers Part 2
How would Bayesian Tagging work and what would it look like? I put together some conceptual images of what is floating around in my head. I plan on sticking this all into a feature request for RSSOwl.
The stars for each tag represent how much you trust that the rss reader can correctly predict if a news article is part of that tag. When creating a new tag it should sit at 0 stars for awhile. When processing a new items and generating statistical scores for each of the tags the trust level defines the minimum probability that the item must make to be officially tagged. If the rss reader thinks it should be in that tag but the percentage is below the trust level it instead would add it to the "suggested tags list" for that article. This brings us to my next image.
In the image above you can see the list of suggested tags for this article. If the user agrees with one of the suggested tags she can then click that tag to officially tag it. When that happens the rss reader should process the item text for new words to add to the tag and generate new statistical probabilities. Then it should move the tag from the suggested tag list to the tag list. Since a user may want to add many suggested tags to an article it is important not to bring up a dialog box when clicking a suggest tag. That way the user can quickly click the correct suggest tags for each item and move on.
One thing to note in the second image is the fact that at first the tags are hidden under the item description. This is because there may be many suggested and real tags for a item. If each item listed its tags then the item list would become cluttered and hard to read.
The stars for each tag represent how much you trust that the rss reader can correctly predict if a news article is part of that tag. When creating a new tag it should sit at 0 stars for awhile. When processing a new items and generating statistical scores for each of the tags the trust level defines the minimum probability that the item must make to be officially tagged. If the rss reader thinks it should be in that tag but the percentage is below the trust level it instead would add it to the "suggested tags list" for that article. This brings us to my next image.
In the image above you can see the list of suggested tags for this article. If the user agrees with one of the suggested tags she can then click that tag to officially tag it. When that happens the rss reader should process the item text for new words to add to the tag and generate new statistical probabilities. Then it should move the tag from the suggested tag list to the tag list. Since a user may want to add many suggested tags to an article it is important not to bring up a dialog box when clicking a suggest tag. That way the user can quickly click the correct suggest tags for each item and move on.
One thing to note in the second image is the fact that at first the tags are hidden under the item description. This is because there may be many suggested and real tags for a item. If each item listed its tags then the item list would become cluttered and hard to read.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Et tu, renetto?
New and last update for youtube. Now renetto is claiming to be a fake. This was all part of his doctoral thesis program at oxford. Is it a joke making fun of the recent drama? Is he serious? I don't care anymore. I so tired of the drama. At a certain point I hit a drama overload and just back off from the subject matter. I think I will be sticking with wii videos and people who are funny.
Let me just say now that I am most definatly who I say I am. I am a student at a local community college who is in his last semester before moving to a four year. I work at a library shelving books. I believe nintendo will win the next generation. I am a baha'i. I have ADD and I am a massive geek. Lately I have been discovering the artist side of me and have been having a blast in drawing class (last semester) and painting I this semester.
So yea. Thats me. I am real.
Let me just say now that I am most definatly who I say I am. I am a student at a local community college who is in his last semester before moving to a four year. I work at a library shelving books. I believe nintendo will win the next generation. I am a baha'i. I have ADD and I am a massive geek. Lately I have been discovering the artist side of me and have been having a blast in drawing class (last semester) and painting I this semester.
So yea. Thats me. I am real.
Saturday, September 9, 2006
Lonelygirl15 part duo
OKAAYYY this is like a big youtube soap opera! Now renetto is claiming to have recieved a phone call from lonelygirl15 and that she is real. She prerecorded these videos and then went away with daniel who she is now married to. There will be a couple more prerecorded videos before she gets back but then she promised they will all get on and explain this whole mess. WOW. Who knows whats going on anymore.
If renetto faked that whole phone call then he seriously needs to win a award for acting (Tuber awards?). I vote we chill for a bit and wait to see if she does make a "we are real" video.
If renetto faked that whole phone call then he seriously needs to win a award for acting (Tuber awards?). I vote we chill for a bit and wait to see if she does make a "we are real" video.
Friday, September 8, 2006
Lonelygirl15
It seems the youtube community is ablaze with the news that Lonleygirl15 is a fake. Not only is she fake but her video blog was a corporate experiment. You can read the forum post from the wizards behind the curtain. Considering she was the #2 most suscribed channel on youtube this is a pretty big shock to the community. Luckily I never could get into her videos... something about her always annoyed me.
Seeing as how Paris Hilton has now come to youtube and Lonelygirl15 was just a fake... it seems that companies are jumping all over youtube. Personally if youtube becomes TV I will have to leave. Youtube's organic grassrootsy nature is what makes it great.
People like renetto and minouye are who get me to keep coming back. Real people. A big thanks to bravesgirl5 for helping to get the information out to the rest of the community.
Update: Wow this is blowing up bigger than I thought. Now its showing up at the LA Times website.
Seeing as how Paris Hilton has now come to youtube and Lonelygirl15 was just a fake... it seems that companies are jumping all over youtube. Personally if youtube becomes TV I will have to leave. Youtube's organic grassrootsy nature is what makes it great.
People like renetto and minouye are who get me to keep coming back. Real people. A big thanks to bravesgirl5 for helping to get the information out to the rest of the community.
Update: Wow this is blowing up bigger than I thought. Now its showing up at the LA Times website.
Thursday, September 7, 2006
Croc Hunter
Rest in peace mate. :(
Sting ray barb to the heart, what a lame way to go. Considering he was recording for his daughters show at the time I hope she doesn't end up blaming herself for his death.
Sting ray barb to the heart, what a lame way to go. Considering he was recording for his daughters show at the time I hope she doesn't end up blaming herself for his death.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Baha'i Oriented "Myspace"
I don't say too much on religion but I just had to spread the word on this one. Someone has launched a social network for baha'is around the world. This is great because I live in a small baha'i community where there aren't many baha'is around my age. The site is called bahaipage.com you can view my profile: winbiko. I wonder what they are using to run the site. It seems like some sort of prepackaged social networking portal type thing. Currently they are looking for "an expert php programmer".
I found out about it through a baha'i youth forum I post on. If you want to know more about the baha'i faith you can visit the official site.
I found out about it through a baha'i youth forum I post on. If you want to know more about the baha'i faith you can visit the official site.
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Who am i
I am working on throwing together a page that will contain all my contact information. It also includes links to sites that I have active accounts at. Not much right now but it is a start.
My Profile
My Profile
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