zmeeagain

why zmeeagain?

2011-06-11T19:42:00.000Z

I think my -not so many- readers long deserved an explanation on the seemingly peculiar choice of the word zmeeagain for my web persona. Here it is:

daily tweets

2010-07-10T11:40:00.001Z

19:05 Potokaki beach volley bar. F-awesome. #

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2010-07-09T11:40:00.001Z

17:22 Psili Ammos Samos. Cooling after having been grilled. #

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2010-07-01T11:40:00.001Z

18:50 Google command line (code.google.com/p/googlecl/) still very limited... #

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2010-06-13T11:40:00.001Z

20:11 eBay through Backstreet Boys' I Want It That Way adaptation: www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW9bHDy5khQ. LoL! #

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2010-05-01T11:40:00.001Z

23:51 Espresso cont.: Syntagma sqr, Athens: 3 euros! What are the margins on that one I wonder... #

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2010-04-09T11:40:00.001Z

11:37 Doodle: Event scheduling and polling online tool. icio.us/3g0k0v #

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2010-04-02T11:40:00.001Z

17:45 Agkyra lounge cafe-bookstore-wifi hotspot, Solwnos 124, downtown athens. A gem. #

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2010-03-10T12:40:00.001Z

21:55 Hungry Planet: What the World Eats (tinyurl.com/6mrp5f). 30 families, 24 countries, 600 meals. $494 to $1.44 a week. Awesome. #

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2010-03-09T12:40:00.001Z

23:33 Corsa is officially on its way to the junkyard. The all new Jazz Exclusive AT seems so much smoother and so much more versatile. #

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2010-01-29T12:40:00.001Z

12:09 Indispensable journey planner if you happen to be in the Netherlands. icio.us/t2brcj #

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2010-01-11T12:40:00.001Z

12:10 EUR721 through our travel agent for ATH - AMS, EUR408 from Orbitz!?! #

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2010-01-01T12:40:00.001Z

22:13 Familiarising with my new Canon S90 compact. First impressions very positive. #

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2009-12-25T12:40:00.001Z

18:16 A seasonal muppet song: tinyurl.com/y9l8dnn #
18:17 And while we're at it: tinyurl.com/yfqhcbo #

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2009-12-13T12:40:00.001Z

04:19 Pligg - a social networking content management system. icio.us/532prh #

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2009-12-10T12:40:00.001Z

22:19 Riding the (Google) waves. Anyone care for a spare invitation? #

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2009-12-09T12:40:00.001Z

20:23 A refreshing alternative to all the boring ppts out there. icio.us/ctjgys #

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2009-12-03T12:40:00.001Z

16:36 "Simple real-time sharing, collaboration, and presentation." icio.us/qf50p2 #

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2009-11-13T12:40:00.001Z

08:48 A open source, collections based web-based publishing platform. icio.us/4agmw0 #

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2009-11-07T12:40:00.001Z

23:02 Playing with animoto (animoto.com/). #

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2009-11-06T12:40:00.000Z

22:11 Perhaps the simplest photo slideshow software out there. Not free though. icio.us/x0mt1b #
22:12 A good WP theme. icio.us/mzcaan #

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2009-11-01T12:40:00.001Z

00:57 Watching "Did you know 4.0" presenation (tinyurl.com/rbcge7) by masters of information design XPLANE. #

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2009-10-18T11:40:00.001Z

17:21 repeating to myself: i will never come to the supermarket on a saturday afternoon. #

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2009-10-08T11:40:00.001Z

18:07 athens zurich, zurich amsterdam, amsterdam hague. that's what you get when booking last minute... #

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2009-09-28T11:40:00.001Z

18:30 at the cafeteria opposite hospital KAT. Worst cappucino ever! Stay away (from both if possible). #

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2009-09-24T11:40:00.001Z

22:59 Old flat just got rented! That'll give us some breathing space BUT must remove all remaining books immediately. But where to? #

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2009-09-14T11:40:00.001Z

23:43 At Brussels, Bedford Hotel's lobby, checking on my emails. Making up long list of chocolcate-related purchases... #

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2009-09-01T11:40:00.001Z

09:22 Playing with the new drivers for Vista and the hand writing Office features of my old Graphire tablet (tinyurl.com/ngx4vh). #

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2009-08-31T11:40:00.001Z

09:31 To all site makers out there: PLEASE respect your users' gravatars (en.gravatar.com/) and save us all from the drudgery. #
09:45 Enable all your Firefox 3.5 disabled extensions at once: tinyurl.com/lht242. #
10:56 Better yet, enable Firefox extensions individually: tinyurl.com/l5m8v4. #

enable old extensions in Firefox 3.5

2009-08-31T06:59:00.016Z

There's a better way than enabling indiscriminately all of your Firefox extensions at once. If you had an indispensable extension which got disabled as soon as you upgraded to Firefox 3.5, there's still hope, as long as the extension's code is compatible (which you'll find out once you're done re-enabling the extension). First go to your Mozilla profile folder and locate the extension you're interested in. This will be in one of the folders in your Mozilla profile folder (e.g.

C:\Users\Mixalitsis.YAP.000\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\094a7r2w.default\extensions\{89736E8E-4B14-4042-8C75-AD00B6BD3900}

). Copy this folder somewhere else, then go to [Tools], [Add-ons] and Uninstall the extension. Close Firefox, copy the folder back to its original location and before restarting Firefox, open install.rdf and change the extension's em:maxVersion to 3.5.* (for more information in locating this refer to Mozilla Developer Centre). Now start Firefox again. You should be able to see your extension again. Chances are that it will still be functional.

daily tweets

2009-08-30T11:40:00.001Z

23:48 Added Noma Bar's astonishing caricatures in "Guess Who?: The Many Faces of Noma Bar" (tinyurl.com/nwp7rp) to my wish list. #

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2009-08-19T11:40:00.001Z

14:48 icio.us/3ngxq2: Map your ISOs to virtual drives. #

burning down the house...

2009-07-06T09:49:00.004Z

Office after the recent explosion: I'm in the fourth floor though, so no luck there...

daily tweets

2009-06-22T11:40:00.001Z

09:01 First weekend in the new flat! Felt like a weekend-off to some remote cottage... #
09:09 DSpace (tinyurl.com/lnfuo9), a open source digital repository system for research material. Hmmm.. #
12:19 Open source (OS) activity throughout the world (tinyurl.com/dmc7ep) and OS environment. Best env.: Sweden. Top activity: France. #

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2009-06-02T11:40:00.001Z

13:40 Export MS Word comments (tinyurl.com/lh3eto). No page numbers though... How lame can MS be; #

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2009-06-01T11:40:00.001Z

00:04 Watched Band of Brothers (tinyurl.com/5dhgbn) last episode. Not a bad series after all. #
10:05 From now on, my tweets will appear in Facebook as status updates (though unrelated to status as such most of the times). #

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2009-05-29T11:40:00.001Z

21:23 waiting for acdc to appear on stage... #
23:22 highway to hell!... #

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2009-05-28T11:40:00.001Z

21:43 Wordpress cannot handle custom TLS ports out of the box? Now how dumb can that be? Anyhow will switch to Roller's Acegi if it comes to that. #

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2009-05-18T11:40:00.001Z

22:56 Installed Windows 7 Build 7100. Seems zippy. Liked: snipping tool and handwriting recognition support. Hated: main taskbar design. #

green Pu-Erh tablet

2009-05-17T20:01:00.009Z

I first thought of twitting about it, but no, some things deserve a fully blown entry. This is a summary given by Dammann Frères:

The designation of Pu-Erh originally comes from the name of a village in the south of Yunnan, Pu er, located on the ancient silk routes which were the foundation of trade between the Chinese government and the indigenous tribes people of Yunnan. Fabricated in the same way as the aged Pu-Erh, this tablet is made with green tea from Da Ye bushes, which are specific to the Yunnan region. The fresh shoots are not subjected to an ageing process, allowing them to conserve their green colour and a captivating floral aroma.

I can only add that this is one of my favourite teas, along with Fortnum and Mason's most excellent darjeeling finest tippy golden flowery orange pekoe tea.

daily tweets

2009-05-02T11:40:00.001Z

16:14 Registered my gravater (gravatar.com) to be used with StackOverflow. Not sure whether it will be of much use in the future... #

awesome cartoon

2009-05-01T13:32:00.004Z

daily tweets

2009-04-23T11:40:00.001Z

15:39 Lured into ordering a couple of Jira/Confluence licenses under their Atlassian $timulus Package. Too good to pass... #
18:29 This is what I need to buy when I get rid of my old PC, Thermaltake's BLAC X Storage (tinyurl.com/6968xp). #

daily tweets

2009-04-22T09:20:00.001Z

Rombouts' Blue Mountain De La Jamaique (http://tinyurl.com/cguzda) - rarest (and priciest) in the world.There's a first time for everything.

daily tweets

2009-04-21T11:40:00.001Z

23:16 Run out of space and resized my laptop partitions with EASEUS (tinyurl.com/6ft938). If you run 32bit Win, you can dnld it for free. #

daily tweets

2009-03-31T11:40:00.001Z

20:31 The more I use it, the more I think tripit (tinyurl.com/2f7men) rocks! #
20:54 Making a mental note to upgrade from DVD DL to BR DL. #

daily tweets

2009-03-16T12:40:00.001Z

20:26 Oh, the dilemmas of life: Corné Port-Royal (tinyurl.com/cceu7v) or Vanparys? #

daily tweets

2009-03-14T12:40:00.001Z

19:21 I now fully appreciate the true genius of Yes Minister, being a civil servant and all... #
13:01 first coffee under real sun of the year! at "okeanis", laimos, vouliagmeni #

daily tweets

2009-03-09T12:40:00.001Z

11:22 Hm.. annoying bug in jumpbox(tinyurl.com/2kovxy) shows multiple headers when trying hosted virtual machine. Still, a brilliant idea! #

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2009-03-08T12:40:00.001Z

10:43 studying icj's statute and rules. #

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2009-03-04T12:40:00.001Z

08:37 An adware author's tail: tinyurl.com/8sh8qh #

daily tweets

2009-03-03T12:40:00.001Z

13:57 Watching Marti Hearst's presentation on tagging: tinyurl.com/b9x8dp #
14:07 Your Europe - Business portal: tinyurl.com/azzjyw Good strating point for legislation. #

daily tweets

2009-02-28T12:40:00.001Z

14:47 Trying out FogBugz (tinyurl.com/4cxdq). Looks promising but unfortunately commercial... #

daily tweets

2009-02-24T12:40:00.001Z

21:50 Enjoying some Jules Destrooper almond thins (www.destrooper.com/). Hmmm lots of foodie posts lately... #
12:23 Oscar to Sean Penn? Sorry, but Langella should have been the clear winner this time. #

daily tweets

2009-02-20T12:40:00.001Z

23:19 You thought you knew about chocolate but you've never had a Vanparys chocolate assortment? Try their cinnamon flavoured praline. Smashing. #
12:56 Use process explorer (tinyurl.com/ys2zq2) to discover which processes have a hold of your files. Immensely useful. #
12:58 Achozen "Deuces", what a track. #

daily tweets

2009-02-11T12:40:00.001Z

19:35 Aachen. I'm awestruck by the place. #

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2009-02-10T12:40:00.001Z

19:41 Maastricht. Well it's damn quiet here during the night. No place for the wicked to hang out. #

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2009-02-08T12:40:00.001Z

13:23 on my way to maastricht from brussels. #

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2009-02-05T12:40:00.001Z

14:23 Joined new domain and lost Outlook.nk2, Outlook's email autocomplete list. #
14:25 Ingressor(tinyurl.com/bq459t) and nk2view(tinyurl.com/336u2j) to the rescue. Anyway thx MS for another undocumented feature. #

daily tweets

2009-02-02T12:41:00.001Z

12:07 Removed .cer from Outlook's blocked attachments. See how you can tell Outlook what's allowed and what's not here: tinyurl.com/azo3ev #

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2009-01-28T12:43:00.001Z

12:04 brilliant feedback management solution: uservoice.com #

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2009-01-26T12:41:00.001Z

19:18 Dick's "The Man in the High Castle" (tinyurl.com/czpq7w), science fiction, what science fiction? #
10:14 HDD working like crazy? Check Resource Monitor ([start], perfmon) before trying anything else. Might reveal stuff unbeknown to you... #

daily tweets

2009-01-19T12:42:00.001Z

20:02 Ordered '99 edition of Le Carre's "The spy who came in from the cold" tinyurl.com/7wgzyu #

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2009-01-18T12:42:00.001Z

19:16 "A man staying at a hotel in Las Vegas was unable to sleep. He goes down to the roulette table,puts $5 on black and wins.He keeps bettingTBC #
19:17 and rides an amazing streak, finally holding well over $1m in chips. Deciding to trust Lady Luck one last time,he loses everything. TBC #
19:19 Returning to his wife in the room, she ask how he did.'Not too bad. I lost five bucks'". One hell of a story... #
20:58 Returning to his wife in the room, she asks how he did.'Not too bad. I lost five bucks'". One hell of a story #

daily tweets

2009-01-17T12:47:00.001Z

22:18 Playing old spectrum games on zxspectrum.net/ #

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2009-01-13T12:41:00.001Z

19:20 wagamama in athens: wtf no benches? more than half tables smoking, spoons and forks come as standar. food not bad just different #

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2009-01-12T12:41:00.001Z

20:25 Read Coraline (tinyurl.com/9rtzot). A refreshing fairytale for a change. #
20:58 How I'd wished my scanner had a FireWire port... #

daily tweets

2009-01-09T12:40:00.001Z

14:29 Enjoying a cup of Albrecht-Dürer-Tee from Nürnberg. tinyurl.com/a4oxxa #

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2009-01-07T12:41:00.001Z

16:43 Flickr Uploadr stuck? Close, delete Application Data/Flickr/Flickr Uploadr/Profiles/.../photos.json and /images/* and restart. Should do it. #
16:47 Finished Logicomix (tinyurl.com/7dj8s5). Appropriate mostly for those who know the who and the what beforehand. #

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2009-01-05T12:40:00.001Z

13:15 Watching Anders Hejlsberg on "Where are programming languages going?" tinyurl.com/9tt9dn #

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2009-01-03T12:42:00.001Z

20:53 for the birds (tinyurl.com/65kyoc). Brilliant stuff by Pixar. #

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2009-01-02T12:41:00.001Z

13:50 Upgraded my Bluetrek Mini with Sony Ericsson's HBH-PV740 bluetooth handsfree (tinyurl.com/92qn5f). #

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2008-12-31T12:41:00.001Z

10:24 After a few print scans with 8800F, quality is good, but even at 2400dpi boy it takes time. Recommend:5% contr., 5% light, 5-10% saturation. #

daily tweets

2008-12-28T12:41:00.001Z

20:36 It's easier to setup sirfStar GPS Tweaker (tinyurl.com/yr557n) to use an external GPS receiver instead of Omnia's internal one. #
20:41 Whoao! Legnoart (tinyurl.com/7fpq4j), replied to evening-email within 3 mins from Blackberry! Awesome. Their products are fab too. #
20:56 Mlesna Green Tea (tinyurl.com/86ep74). Are they serious? #

daily tweets

2008-12-27T12:41:00.001Z

16:22 Dexpot 1.4 (tinyurl.com/7u8wqp) is a smooth virtual desktop manager. And it's free. #

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2008-12-24T12:41:00.001Z

16:14 CoolPreviews on Firefox and Flickr. An interesting viewing alternative. #
17:04 Scanning and tuning my new CanoScan 8800F. #

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2008-12-23T12:41:00.001Z

17:33 Testing my new Gigaworks T20 Series II speakers. Headphones output and aux in necesitated the upgrade from outdated Goodmans. Tad bassy. #

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2008-12-17T12:41:00.001Z

22:21 Watching the news on Cooliris (tinyurl.com/2zwqw9). #
22:27 Read Petros Markaris' latest novel. Lighter than the others with a simpler plot.One more to read, "Basic Shareholder". #
23:12 Those installations by Johan Lorbeer, well, of himself, are really something! #

daily tweets

2008-12-09T12:41:00.001Z

14:29 Read Roberto Saviano's Gomorra. You should read it too. It is so unbelievable that it makes for a fascinating reading. #

Samsung Omnia

2008-12-05T20:49:00.000Z

It's been almost a month since my old K700i was put to rest for good and I bought the Samsung Omnia. I picked WM 6.1 as my first mobile OS, instead of Apple's OS X or Symbian or Linux. There are numerous reviews out there (check out gsmarena for example), but most concentrate on superficial first day use characteristics and specs instead of functional deficiencies, usability concerns, business aspects or programmatic abilities. This post is a personal account of the shortcomings and strengths I found in using Omnia daily in this past month. First of all this is not just a phone, this is mostly a PDA, so if all you want is a simple phone with a good camera, players etc go look somewhere else. It gets a lot of getting used to to familiarise yourself with Omnia. Although it's loaded with some great features, it requires someone quite comfortable with Windows OS, with installing custom applications, tweaking settings and generally good at finding their way in internet forums for help, apps, tips, hacks, solutions etc etc. Observations I bothered to collect:

User guides suck big time (online or otherwise)
Active Sync is crap. Good news if you have Vista, you can use Windows Mobile Device Centre which is a lot better. However, if you need to sync with more than 1 PC one of them will not work properly. See xda-developers thread for more.
Cannot set custom ringtones per contact; you need a small hack for that. I'll spare you the frustration with this twit.
Does not support voice calls out of the box!!
You cannot preselect type of message, SM or MM, this is done for you "automagically" once you put a subject or CC/BCC. You may only preselect email vs mobile messages.
You cannot separately turn off GPRS. You might wonder why would you want to do that. Well, I've already said that this is not your average phone, there's dozens of processes running underneath, and applications may need an internet connection for whatever reason (updates etc). If a program requests a data connection it will be granted the permission of opening a GPRS connection, after displaying a popup for some seconds, giving you the chance to cancel the attempt to connect. If you fail to notice that popup within the given timeframe and press cancel, you might be up for a nasty surprise when the bill comes at the end of the month. To separately disable GPRS you have to download a third party application, like MoDaCo's NoData or others.
You can turn off 3G individually, but even that is not at all profound: go to Settings, Telephone, More, choose Band Selection, Get Settings, and then choose GSM 900/1800 (for EU for example), instead of automatic and it will not connect through 3G.
GPS worked out of the box for both Google Maps and camera. A-Location worked fine too.
A few times had to re-enter the WEP key; haven't found out why yet.
Alarms are a charm to setup. Beware though, as when you wake up chances are you'll touch the screen somewhere, doesn't matter where, and the alarm will snooze. It's virtually impossible to cancel it unless you are fully awake and handle it with care. What's more, once you've snoozed an alarm, there's no way to tell whether it's cancelled or snoozed. You may not think this is a big deal, until you use it.
The oft-told screen legibility problem under direct sunlight will be the least of your problems. A tucked-in stylus would be handy sometimes, although Samsung has done a great job with their Touch interface.
No hand-writing recognition application (like LG's PSNote) in most non-English versions.

What about all the good stuff about the phone? They're all in the aforementioned review...

daily tweets

2008-11-28T05:55:00.000Z

21:55 Watched 2007's Die Falscher: at last, a good movie. #

daily tweets

2008-11-25T13:33:00.001Z

12:13 Omnia custom rings hack: create My Device/Storage Card/My Documents/My Documents/My Ringtones and stick your mp3s there. #
12:45 All about Samsung Omnia blog of note: mysamsungomnia.wordpress.com/ #

daily tweets

2008-11-20T12:59:00.001Z

20:14 Toying around with my new Samsung Omnia tinyurl.com/6mzfpk More to come in a full blog post as soon as I find my way around. #
14:26 WinMo Device Center for Vista waaay better than horrible ActiveSync. #

daily tweets

2008-11-18T13:05:00.001Z

22:09 American Scientist's100 or so Books that shaped a Century of Science tinyurl.com/6krrmf Knuth's up there along with Einstein/Feynman! #
11:24 Insanely large FAQ on Java generics by Angelika Langer: tinyurl.com/56eet7 #
13:04 Looking at some astonishing A4 papercut works by Peter Callesen: tinyurl.com/2nxhxu #

the ISO paper size concept

2008-11-18T11:40:00.009Z

I've been using ISO paper sizes (A4, A3, etc) since the dawn of (my) time. I have even worked for a company that makes optimisation software for paper industries around the world. But I have never ever questioned the rationale behind their sizes. Well it turns out that the sizes are such that if you take any paper sheet of size An and fold it across the long side you'll get two An+1 sheets. So, if An has (x, y) dimensions, then An+1 will have (y, x/2) dimensions. Keeping the ratio constant gives us x/y = y/(x/2) or x/y = 2y/x hence x/y=sqrt(2)! So the aspect ratio of the sides for every paper size is 1:sqrt(2). In other words the ratio of any square's side to its diagonal. Given that A0 has this ratio and an area of 1sqm, we get the (0.841, 1.189) dimensions, and applying the halving process we reach the all too familiar A4 paper size of (0.210, 0.297). Since the sqrt(2) is an irrational number (1,4142135623730950488016887242097...), actual dimensions are always rounded to the nearest millimetre; there's even a type for calculating that but I'll spare you the details. ISO 216 has all that and more. For a free summary of the standard you may also have a look at Wikipedia.

one-pass tree pruning

2008-11-17T17:58:00.005Z

A friend of mine wondered the other day if one-pass tree pruning was possible. Common sense dictates that a two-pass algorithm is required to first mark the subtrees due for deletion and then a second walk to do the actual pruning. I have since revisited this thought and managed to get a one-pass proof of concept:


boolean pruneTree(Iterator parentIterator, TreeNode root, Set allowedNodeValues) {
    boolean pruneNode = true;

    Iterator nodeIterator = root.getChildren().iterator();
    while (nodeIterator.hasNext()) {
        TreeNode child = nodeIterator.next();
        pruneNode = pruneTree(nodeIterator, child, allowedNodeValues) && pruneNode;
        }

    pruneNode = pruneNode && !allowedNodeValues.contains(root.getValue());
    if (pruneNode && parentIterator != null) {
        parentIterator.remove();
    }

    return pruneNode;
}

This will remove parts of the tree whose node values are of no interest to us, otherwise retaining the same structural properties as those of the original tree:


    a                                               a
   / \                                             / \
  b   c                                           b   c
 / \  | \     pruneTree(it, a, {a,b,c,d}) -->    /    | 
d  e  b  e                                      d     b     
   |    / \                                                 
   c   d   f

To make sure this was doing what was meant to do, a pretty print method was necessary. I used indentation and nested parentheses (with slight adjustments from Knuth's original):


void printTreeIndented(TreeNode root, int currentDepth) {
    System.out.println();
    for (int i = 0; i < currentDepth - 1; i++) {
        System.out.print("\t");
    }
    System.out.print(root.getValue());

    currentDepth++;
    for (TreeNode node : root.getChildren()) {
        printTreeIndented(node, currentDepth);
    }
}

void printTreeParenthesized(TreeNode root) {
    System.out.print(root);
    List children = root.getChildren();
    if (children.size() == 0) {
        return;
    }

    System.out.print('(');
    printTreeParenthesized(children.get(0));
    for (int i = 1; i < children.size(); i++) {
        System.out.print(", ");
        printTreeParenthesized(children.get(i));
    }
        
    System.out.print(')');
}

The first one will print:

while the second will print a(b(d, e(c)), c(b, e(d, f))). Unfortunately after some runs I realised that the tree pruning algorithm's performance is dismal; it prunes by removing nodes bottom up, one by one. After all, it has no other way of knowing what to prune in one pass. Compare this with a fast mark pass and a second prune pass whereby whole sub-trees can be pruned. What's worse, as it's written, it runs out of heap space for large trees with more than a handful of levels. I guess the question is, does anybody know of any fast one-pass tree pruning algorithm?

daily tweets

2008-11-13T13:12:00.001Z

22:11 Enjoying a Frey Supreme Passion Pecan & Caramel Swiss milk chocolate tinyurl.com/6z6g4w.Best when accompanying a malty Breakfast tea. #

daily tweets

2008-11-12T13:07:00.001Z

21:46 An exceptional Agiorgitiko:Domaine Helios-Grande Reserve 2003,by Kokotos. A must for the coming festive season. #
22:50 OMG: tinyurl.com/5tuldy I think I'm scared. #

daily tweets

2008-11-04T13:23:00.001Z

09:36 Outlook 2003 complains about MAPI32.DLL? Try renaming the MSMAPI32.DLL to MSMAPI32.XXX and restart Outlook. Likely cause: 2007 residue... #
09:44 LinkedIn added Applications (Box.net, Slideshare, etc). Hmmm..... #
10:14 Enabled Google Calendar gadget from Labs and put it on top, using nav bar drag&drop, also enabled in Labs. Highly recommended. #

daily tweets

2008-11-02T13:22:00.001Z

22:00 Finished Philip Dick's Radio Free Albemuth: what a flop... #

daily tweets

2008-10-24T11:42:00.001Z

09:00 Monaco Mac look alike font for Windows programmers: tinyurl.com/ymeb7t #

daily tweets

2008-10-21T11:41:00.001Z

12:49 Got my new OCZ Rally2 USB 2.0 dual channel 16GB flash memory drive (tinyurl.com/o3ph9). I can now make that odd DVD soft copy. #

daily tweets

2008-10-20T11:41:00.001Z

17:29 Lunch at Milos, hilton. Best restaurant service ever. #
19:58 Vicky Cristina Barcelona=Woody Alen's sexual fantasies. Thank you very much, my own are more than enough. I'll tell my little niece though.. #
20:31 Best "commercial" feta cheese: Sgouritsas, Taygetos. Hard to find (Vassilopoulos, N. Psychiko is one place I know) and pricey; my favourite. #

daily tweets

2008-10-18T11:41:00.001Z

01:07 Just came back from Nonna pina, Daphni. A good italian restaurant it turned out to be. #

daily tweets

2008-10-17T11:41:00.001Z

11:21 Adobe have fixed their Flash Player clickjacking vulnerability tinyurl.com/5x2bzy #
11:38 HexEditor plugin for Notepad++: tinyurl.com/6rkjxd #

daily tweets

2008-10-16T11:41:00.001Z

22:18 Vaio gives me: "The installed battery may not be properly connected to the computer or may not be compatible with the computer" ??!!?!?!? #
22:32 Kill ISBMgr.exe process to stop nagging message. Run msconfig and uncheck ISB Utility in Startup tab. Sony's ISB Utility update went tits up #

emails, images, base64 and html

2008-10-15T08:46:00.009Z

How many times have you received an image-laden email that can't quite show itself properly and instead you get the source? This is a recent email I received in Outlook:


Return-Path: <sender@gmail.com>
X-Original-To: you@somedomain.com
Delivered-To: you@somedomain.com
Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1])
.
.
. 
by Subject: More 3D Chalk Drawings by Julian Beever!
In-Reply-To: <BAY123-DS3D0865B1F4499DF30C37EA6310@phx.gbl>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/related; 
 boundary="----=_Part_66037_8745117.1224059387776"
References: <BAY123-DS3D0865B1F4499DF30C37EA6310@phx.gbl>
To: undisclosed-recipients:;

------=_Part_66037_8745117.1224059387776
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; 
 boundary="----=_Part_66038_2852077.1224059387777"

------=_Part_66038_2852077.1224059387777
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline

Excellent, as usual!

------=_Part_66038_2852077.1224059387777
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline

<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><br><br><br>
.
.
.
</div><br></div>

------=_Part_66038_2852077.1224059387777--

------=_Part_66037_8745117.1224059387776
Content-Type: image/jpeg; name=image008.jpg
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-ID: <image008.jpg@01C92D89.A8F97520>
X-Attachment-Id: 0.8

/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQEAYABgAAD/2wBDAAoHBwgHBgoICAgLCgoLDhgQDg0NDh0VFhEYIx8lJCIf
.
.
.
d1qMmLqKKoagXqjRKiijQgpXJWePioorETGoxVvRRRUf/9k=
------=_Part_66037_8745117.1224059387776--

This is a mime-multipart html mail, that's got a few image/jpeg parts. To get the image(s) out of it, save it as .msg somewhere and open it with an editor (e.g. Notepad++). Look for the image part you're interested in:


Content-Type: image/jpeg; name=image008.jpg
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-ID:

Then strip everything off leaving only the base64-encoded image payload that appears beneath (the one that starts with /9j/ and ends in /9k= in our example). Save as say img-base64.txt. This should now look like:


/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQEAYABgAAD/2wBDAAoHBwgHBgoICAgLCgoLDhgQDg0NDh0VFhEYIx8lJCIf
IiEmKzcvJik0KSEiMEExNDk7Pj4+JS5ESUM8SDc9Pjv/2wBDAQoLCw4NDhwQEBw7KCIoOzs7Ozs7
...
JW+6Mj+7T9ixQoEAUFQTiqxPzn61zyep0QWhE4PULioGUk8mrjAbajYcGkiim2egpsSkvz0qcgUi
EjpSY0i1Gp2/KpxRUauxH3jRUG1j/9k=

This is your image, base64 encoded. The "save as .msg" bit was necessary as what's shown in Outlook is fiddled with and will not decode properly.

Now there are several options on how best to proceed. You may use Notepad++ builtin base64 decoding capabilities (TextFX, TextFX Tools, Base64 Decode) and save it as .jpg. Or, if Notepad++ is not available, you may use a command line utility for that, like the excellent base64 by John Walker.

Few people are aware though that the base64 payload can be used directly into html pages, letting the browser do all the hard work! The simplest way is putting the payload in an <img> element:


<img src="data:image/jpeg;base64,/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQEA...UG1j/9k="/>

Likewise in a CSS background:


div.image {
  background-image:url(data:image/jpeg;base64,/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQEA...UG1j/9k=);
}

This paradigm applies to other types of entities not just images. CSS stylesheets and javascript scripts can also appear as base64 encoded payloads in html pages. I will simply reiterate here two examples by Grey Wyvern:


<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="data:text/css;base64,LyogKioqKiogVGVtcGxhdGUgKioq..." />:


<script type="text/javascript" href="data:text/javascript;base64,dmFyIHNjT2JqMSA9IG5ldyBzY3Jv..."></script>

Now, I don't know why anyone would want to do that with javascript in particular, since base64 encoding bloats original size by a factor of 4/3, other than a perverse pleasure of tinkering about.

daily tweets

2008-10-14T11:41:00.001Z

23:19 I just now realized that all of the urls include the last dot when the tweets are posted to my blog! #

daily tweets

2008-10-12T11:41:00.001Z

20:13 Happy go lucky: pleasant if you've lived in the UK. #
01:50 Dinner at Pakindian, Menandrou: not that great food... #

daily tweets

2008-10-05T11:41:00.001Z

16:19 Another excellent meal at the renovated Furin Kazan. #