My son Connor is very into paper airplanes since I made one the other day. Someday I'll have to try to make this one for him.

Paper airplane - The best paper airplane in the world!

Thanks to Dvorak, here's another one with instructions.

Posted 7:03 PM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink   

(updated 11/09/05)
Finally got my Firefox extension approved!! Unwrap Text

While poking around trying to get the description formatting correct, found these forms at mozillazine.org

(updated 7/30/05)
Someday, I want to write a "URL unwrapper" extension. Looks pretty easy...

(Use CopyPlainText as an example, since it works based on the current selection. Then use SuperDragNGo as another example since it opens another tab.)

How to write Firefox extensions

(Looks like that URL has moved, so here's a direct link to another one I found, I think from the same author)

roachfiend.com ? How to create Firefox extensions

... and here's a follow-up article by the same guy that tells about the auto-update check mechanism for extensions

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References
MozillaZine (menu setup, enable/disable)

Building an Extension Walkthrough -- from Mozilla DEV

JavaScript reference from Mozilla.

DOM Inspector -- look for IDs, CSS styles, etc

Debugger - set breakpoints and inspect call stacks

Summary of some good extension developer tools, including Web Developer Extension, Greasemonkey, ColorZilla, Platypus

Mozilla Dev docs on what's changed in Firefox 1.5

Posted 6:50 PM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink   

Most of us nerds struggle with all the services that run in Windows. Here, David Solomon actually gets Windows to work without ANY services!

beware: highly technical article -- good for a day reading at poolside. :)

Posted 10:09 PM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink   

Top 100 Global Brands

BusinessWeek Online: Top 100 Global Brands

Posted 9:03 PM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink   

I have used Konfabulator before -- now Yahoo! owns the product and has put a new face on it. More than 1,000 widgets available...

Yahoo! Widgets

Posted 8:59 PM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink   

Stats site shows the breakdown of users on the internet, and their screen resolutions.

Most popular is 1024 x 768, with 57% users.

OneStat.com - About Us - Press Box

Posted 8:55 PM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink   

MSN Virtual Earth is here. Currently in "beta" version, but then again, Google keeps the BETA tag on their stuff for quite a while. (Hell, Google Groups is still in beta and I've been using it for years)

Here is some info about Virtual Earth APIs, creating applications using Virtual Earth.
thoughts on who's already using Virtual Earth for their mapping solutions, etc.

Check out Channel9 video here.

Virtual Earth team blogs.

Apparently "Eagle Eye", which will show 45 degree tilt view of map/buildings/etc is due in the Fall release.

Posted 8:50 PM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink   

Someday I want to look into the Google maps API - people are starting to come up with some cool ideas on how to use the technology.

Here's one where you can make your own map with various points of interest.
GoogleMania::MapBuilder::Home

Transparencies. Very cool - overlays a transparent satellite image over the top of the map view, or vice versa.

This guy uses the Google Maps APIs to interact with the mapping, and track your walking / running route. Draws it on the google map while you plot, and calculates the total distance.
google maps pedometer

(Thanks to "LifeHacker" for the link to this.)

Space shuttle tracking. Here

Cell tower locator here

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Here is a summary of top 10 uses of Google Maps

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Here's a decent video of how to use the Google Maps API. He integrates it with his classic ASP pages.

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Plot zip codes in the USA against Google Maps

Posted 8:47 PM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink   

Things continue to heat up in the mapping world.

Google maps recently added their "hybrid" view, where you get the satellite view, with streets labeled on the photos. MSN Virtual Earth (see other related posts) already has this as their "default" satellite view.

Posted 10:06 PM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink   

I definitely don't follow all of this, but it's cool to watch. Tunnel through SSH / SSL by exploiting FrontPage extension to get access to machine.

Whoppix and WHAX demos from whoppix.net and iwhax.net

Posted 9:19 PM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink   

My buddy Mark has told me a bit about hiding programs from detection, etc. He blogged this article that walks you through the entire process, including using Alternative Data Streams (ADS) to stuff your code into an existing EXE. I don't mean to inject the DLL, but physically store your code in another EXE, so you can't see it, even from explorer!

Only bummer - ADS only works in NTFS.

Anyway - here's the article. I'll leave it up to Marchello to implement :)

CodeGuru: Keyboard Spy: Implementation and Counter Measures

Posted 5:17 PM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink   

Thanks to the TWIT gang for this link.

Open source tool to decrypt the AAC / .m4p files you get from iTunes.

Since we don't have an iPod to download to directly from iTunes, we have a hellish process to go through.

• Burn CD from iTunes (which won't work on the desktop PC for some reason [unknown error], so we do this on the laptop)
  
• Turn around and rip from the CD to mp3.
  
• Finally, use the TDK player software to move the mp3 files to the player.

ugh...

hymn -- decrypt iTunes and iPod music / unprotect AAC files (m4p --> m4a)

Caution (from Leo): When this hymn decrypter is running, it apparently registers as an "authorized" computer for iTunes to let it read / "play" the m4p file. When it's done with whatever music files you asked it to work on, it "unauthorizes" the software. Basically, the software is acting like an authorized computer for the life of the decryption. If you do this all the time, there will be all these auth / unauth calls for your account. Wonder if Apple will start to be suspicious???

Thanks TWIT !!

Posted 10:19 PM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink   

Thanks to Attack of the Show -- all kinds of info about XBox 360. Pictures of some kid with the unit, playing Halo 2. "First Xbox 360 seen in the wild"

360hacker.net » Xbox 360 hacker hacking mods modding modchip games news blog forums

Posted 9:29 PM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink   

Saw this on Attack of the Show the other day.

You can add your own search engines to the search control in Firefox. Here's how:

Some popular engines here, pretty cool, added via a JavaScript call?

Quick summary: you put a .src file in the searchengines Firefox folder, along with optional icon (16x16 GIF or PNG). That's it, you're searching.

AotS notes on this and below is the SRC file for a google site search.

<search
version="7.1"
name="Your Site's Title"
description="Search www.yoursite.com"
action="http://www.google.com/search"
searchForm="http://www.google.com"
method="GET"
>

<input name="sourceid" value="Mozilla-search">
<input name="sitesearch" value="www.yoursite.com">
<input name="q" user="">
</search>

Posted 10:31 PM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink   

Just another PC-based VOIP client. This one claims to be free for many-many countries, for both PC-to-PC calls, as well as PC-to-LandLine calls.

The VoipBuster!



Posted 7:07 PM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink   

Crazy - my buddy Mark's software Visage has been written up by Symantec. Here's the page of info.

Posted 9:19 AM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink   

At least some reports are showing that there are reasons not to offshore all your work.

Dell sets up camp in the USA

Survey results

Posted 12:41 PM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink   

Great for cheating on geocaching :) you can enter latitude / longitude in google maps. MIN DEC (minute decimal) format seems to be OK with google.

You can literally copy/paste the coordinates into google maps from geocaching.com.

example: N 33° 04.422 W 117° 16.382

(Also helpful, use geocode.com to convert from street address to latitude / longitude coordinates. Then geocaching.com can search nearby that location.)

updated 8/8/05
Here's an example of how to direct URL link into Google Maps. You can see this from the "link to this page" link on the top right.

This is with lat/long coords:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=33.1051+-117.30523

This is with street address:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=6464+pyrus+pl,+92009 (this will use default zoom settings)

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=6464+pyrus+pl,+92009&ll=33.125188,-117.289696&spn=0.094100,0.158512&hl=en
(this will have the exact zoom/location settings you had when you copied the link)

Posted 10:22 PM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink