Rantings from Steven smethurst
I have created a script that generates a new chess puzzle from a database once a day. The puzzles can be email to you or you can subscribe via a RSS feed.
The script is still under heavy development any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Please feel free to contact me.
On very bus stop in Vancouver there is a 5 digit code near the top left or button right that is used to identify the bus stop. i have often wondered why I can look up the bus schedules via this number especially when I call up Chris at Translink automationed phone system. People in noisy areas or with heavy ascents can never get the right cross streets with there voice system but imagine if they let people type the bus stop code in to there phone.
Some SFU students got the bright idea to create a system that uses this bus stop identification number and text messing to relay bus schedules to your phone. Mytxt.ca the system is down right now it cost too much to run for two students but they have said that they would give the system to anyone that wants it. $1000 a month for the dedicated computer with bandwidth and $0.07 a text that they send out.
I would gladly pay $0.50 for this information, I hope someone picks it up or Translink gets off there ass and creates something similar. If you are looking for something to invest in that helps your community this project would be ideal
The original story on the Vancouver courier
Frustrated university students take bus schedule matter into own hands
bookmarks for funvill
Thank to the help of herebox.org I was able to add the ability to get new links from my del.icio.us account and post them on this site once a week. the script uses curl instead of fopen which is much more secure.
I made a few changes to the script.
The original herebox.org script can be downloaded from his site. yawd-curl-1.0 script
My modified version can be downloaded from my site UltimateWarriorTags with yawd-curl-1.1 script
Example: Delicious-03-28-2007
One of my new favorite spots
The atmospheres is pretty nice, they have an area where you can sit down on the floor on pillows, and the normal chair and table area with pleasant music plays in the background.
The portions are smaller the some of the other places I have been too but it always fills me up, the good is very good and there lunch specials are great. Less then $6 for most lunch items and 12-15 for the dinner.
Service is fast and the waiters are approachable and attentive.
I would suggest this place to anyone in the area and I might even be convinced to travel some distance to eat here.
Worth a visit
Cuisine: Thai
Price: $10 - $20
Address: 3106 Cambie, Vancouver Map
Tel: 604-879-9944
My Dinehere.ca review
Overall: 4 /10
Food: 4 /10
Service: 4 /10
Ambiance: 4 /10
When you add a caption to an image in Google’s Picasa/Picasa2 (and some other image editing programs) the caption is saved in a special spot in the imaged header section called IPTC data.
While creating the IPTC mod for the simple gallery script I had to extract the IPTC information for the title of the image. This allowed me to extract the title from Picasa and included it under my images in my gallery.
What is IPTC?
IPTC stands for International Press Telecommunications Council and is a defined set of medadata mainly used in news organizations for copyright proposes.
Basically its a standard set of attributes for an image.
Some of the attributes that are included in this standard are; datesent, timesent, objectname, editstatus, urgency, category, subcategory, fixture, keyword, reldate, reltime, specinstr, credate, cretime, orgprg, prgver, byline, bytitle, city, sublocation, state, countrycode, countryname, orgtransref, headline, credit, source, copyright, contact, caption, captionwriter, imagetype, orientation, language, subfile, appreserve. for a full list see the REF document on IPTC.
How to I extract IPTC information from an image?
Extracting and altering IPTC information in PHP is very simple with IPTCParse() and IPTCEmbed()
Example: View all available IPCT Data
function output_iptc_data( $image_path ) {
$size = getimagesize ( $image_path, $info);
if(is_array($info)) {
$iptc = iptcparse($info["APP13"]);
foreach (array_keys($iptc) as $s) {
$c = count ($iptc[$s]);
for ($i=0; $i <$c; $i++)
{
echo $s.' = '.$iptc[$s][$i].'<br>';
}
}
}
}
Kyle Cooper has directed over 150 film title sequences, and has been credited with “almost single-handedly revitalizing the main-title sequence as an art form”. He is the founder of two internationally recognized film design companies, Imaginary Forces and Prologue Films. Cooper earned a M.F.A. in Graphic Design from the Yale School of Art, where he studied independently with Paul Rand. Cooper is a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and holds the honorary title of Royal Designer for Industry from the Royal Society of Arts in London.
Kyle coops’s title sequences are well done that they are starting to out shine the movies that they where designed for, In some cases movie reviewers have even suggested paying the ticket price for the movie just to see the opening credits. He has been credited with some of the best title sequences i have ever seen Se7en, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Flubber, The Mummy, Spider-Man 1 & 2, Dawn of the Dead, Metal Gear Solid 2, Metal Gear Solid 3
Ceramic Egglings look and feel just like real eggs, Just crack one open, add water. Perfect for brightening any home or office space. Plants thrive for months in their shell and can be replanted in soil.
Spicy red pepper, lavender and wild strawberries, and many others.
Price $9.50 US, each.
A while ago I was looking for a truly upload and go photo gallery one that does require a database. I found an abandoned PHP project called Simple PHP gallery by Paul Griffin.
No database required, automatically generates thumbnails, auto generates gallery layout based off of file structior, a truly upload and go photo gallery. It was almost perfect only missing a few “nice to have” mod_rewrite and comments, file upload, and IPCT data.
After a little searching on Google I found that other people had made improvements to this package such as Enhanced Simple PHP Gallery and Espg v2 that alowed for mod_rewrite, comments.
I took the eSPG project and altered its source code and added the ability to read the IPCT titles, a pretty easy mod that you can read about and download Enhanced Simple PHP Gallery IPTC mod
The website for original developer of this project has been shut down. I have mirrored of the original project that you can download. eSPG with IPCT mod
Features
Minimum Requirements
Recommended Requirements
How to make cheap plastic babies with plastic wrap and clear tape.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX7QzfNS3xk
A gallery and videos can be found on mark jenkins website, it looks like he mainly builds sculptures out of plastic wrap and clear tap.
Imagen creating a scare crow with the same technique, or filling them up with LEDs to make a weried ambient glowing plastic baby.
When you take a snap shot with your digital camera your camera also saves some extra meta information to the file called Exif data.
Different camaras save different information to the Exif portion of your picture most of the time it will contains information like Manufacturer, Model, Orientation, Software, Date and Time, YCbCr Positioning, Compression, x-Resolution, y-Resolution, Resolution Unit, Exposure Time, FNumber, ExposureProgram, Exif Version, Date and TimeCompressed Bits per Pixel, Exposure Bias, MaxApertureValue, Metering Mode, Flash, Focal Length, Maker Note, FlashPixVersion, Color Space, PixelXDimension, PixelYDimension, File Source, InteroperabilityIndex, InteroperabilityVersion, ect.
Some cameras and cellphone cameras even include GPS data for GEO Location. (making a map of where your pictures have been take) more about GEOTagging, GEOTagging flickr map of Vancouver
Flickr keeps a database of all this data including manufacture and model and creates trend data.
With this information you can see the rise and fall of different camaras based on there models. Invaluable when you are doing research for a new camera. Flickr even takes its one step father by providing you example pictures taken with the camera.
I hate buying batteries, I hate having to turn my house up side down looking for a fresh battery when I desperately need it. I will go out of my way to make sure that all my little gadgets have built in NiMH/NiCd Cells with adapters that I plug in each nigh.
USBCELL are your standard NiMH 1.2v 1300mah AA batteries, but rechargeable via the USB port on your computer. An interesting idea but it takes about 5 hours to charge it to 90%.
$18.59 US for a pair of two from Amazon
A video where lassegg hits each note on a drum and piano separately and edited them together to make a song. Its pretty good if you ask me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzqumbhfxRo
Some “Youtube” people are saying that he ripped off Michel Gondry’s video but there is a pretty important difference between the two. Michel Gondry’s is mixing drum sequences while lassegg is mixing just the beats of the song them remixing them.
I think there is a substantial difference between the two.
Here is Michel Gondry’s video and heres lassegg video
What one do you like better?
And here is a really slow one with a Guitar thats not too good but still uses the same tech.
I found this great plug-in for [tag]Wordpress[/tag] that allows your users to subscribe to a posts comments, any reply to the post will be sent to there email automatically.
This is much easier then having to check back on the post periodically to see if anyone has made a response to your response or subscribe to the comments rss feed.
The Plugin is very easy to install - just upload two files and activate the Plug-in in the Wordpress Plug-in’s control panel.
Currently I set the default subscription to true, but you can disable it by un-checking the subscription check box when creating a comment.
http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/subscribe-to-comments/
I found this plug-in from a post on www.johnchow.com lot of good info about Blog design there if you are interested
Isnoop.net has created a package tracking tool that will map your UPS, FedEx, USPS, or DHL/Airborne package’s progress with Google Maps.
Just enter your tracking number (the tracker automatically detects which company your package was shipped with) and press enter and you will be presented with a map of the progress of your package.
Also it automatically generates a RSS feed of the pickups and deliveries so that you can track the package with your favorite RSS reader.
There are other website SimpleTracking.com, PackageMapper.com that do simlare things but I have yet to fine one that is so clean (no ads) and easy to use.
Most people that I talk to find RSS feeds confusing.
They don’t want to set up a feed reader , they can seem to understand that it could save them time in the long run and helps them organize all the blogs and news groups that they they read.
Checking 35 websites every day just in case something new has been posted seems ridiculous to me but its a way of life for many others.
This is why websites like rssfwd.com and squeet.com where invented. They resolve this problem by allowing you to set up a email subscription to any RSS feed. Any updates to the RSS feed will apear in your inbox.
You can subscribe to abluestar.com’s email subscription list that will send you an email every time a new post is added.
Or if you use a feed reader you can subscribe to our rss feed
www.Johnchow.com has an excellent post about the importations of deep linking. With the advent of scrapers (A robot that reads blog posts RSS feeds and creates copies of content for there own website) alot of your content can be easily stolen but if you include some links to posts in your post they will be copied to the scrapers website and you should be able to get some [tag]SEO[/tag] benefits.
Another reason I deep link in almost very posts is because of scrapers. I offer a full feed RSS. That makes it very easy for scrapers to rip the entire content of my blog and post it on a scraper blog. Most scrapers rip the entire post with all links intact. If your post has a ton of deep links back to your blog, then you may get some get [tag]SEO[/tag] benefits and visitors from the scraper blog.
The post also goes though a few other reasons that deep linking in posts is important.
When writing a blog post you should always try to deep link to some of your older articles. You cannot control what others link to on your blog, but you can control what you link to. By deep linking to your older posts, you help your readers discover posts they may have missed. You also help Google do the same thing….
Its well worth the read
The Importance Of Deep Linking
What is Google Talk or GTalk
Google talk (GTalk) is a instance message client and voice over IP client provided by Google. GTalk uses an open protocal called XMPP that allowes for other XMPP instance message clients to communicate with Google’s GTalk network. XMPP is the same protocal that Jabber is based off so any Jabber client should be able to communicant with Google’s GTalk network and client. In December 2005 Google purchased 5% of AOL and announced that in the future AIM users and GTalk users will be able to communicate with each other. Google and Skype are also exploring interoperability via the open protocol.
Basically it is a instance message client that works on an open protocol.
What makes GTalk great
The of the biggest features of GTalk is that it operates on the open protocol XMPP. XMPP is build to to be expandable with plugins and extra features. you can add just about anything you want to the payload such as VOIP, Encryption, or video messaging, games, ect…
Googles Music Trends is a opt-in service bundled with GTalk that records the last play mp3 on your computer and builds trend data from it. View the top 20 music trends from each genre. although you are not able to see your own trend data it is still pretty interesting. if you want to recored your own musical trend data I suggest a service like last.fm
All your conversations in GTalk are recored in your GMail for future reference. This can be extremely useful when trying to hunt down the restaurant that billy told you about 4 weeks ago.
How do I get GTalk
You can download it from google’s GTalk website
I don’t want to install anything is there a web version to Gtalk
Yes, Gtalk works with almost any jabber clients and there just so happens to be a tons of web based jabber/Gtalk clients out there. Google even gives you the ability to add GTalk to your web page.
How do I connect to GTalk network with a Jabber client
It depends on your jabber client, I use Trillian a instance message client that alowes you to connect variouse IM networks such as AIM, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, IRC, Jabber, ect.
How do I connect to GTalk with Trillian
Google has a pretty good help page on how to set up Trillian with GTalk
Basicly it goes something like this
How can I contact you with GTalk
Add me, 
If you have more than one system running XP you have obviously purchased more than one copy of the Operating System. However you may have forgotten which Product Key you used for which system. It happens. I have 5 systems and have had all of them running XP at times. XP does not store the Product Key in a recognizable format in the registry.
Keyfinder is a freeware utility that retrieves your Product Key. has the options to copy the key to clipboard, save it to a text file, or print it for safekeeping. It works on Windows 95, 98, ME, NT4, 2000, XP, Vista, .NET, Office 97, Office XP, Office 2003 and Office 2007. It even has the ability by using Microsoft’s own script to change installation keys. See the Microsoft Knowledgebase article here Q328874
Visit the Keyfinder Homepage
While creating a post about julie-feeney a wonderful musician I wanted to post some streamable samples of her music.
Most Projects that I found where overly complicated and bloated with features that I just didn’t need. I was about to give up and use Quicktime plugin untill i found audio-player-wordpress-plugin by 1pixelout.net its exactly what I wanted a simple player with a Start and Stop button.
You can even use it on non wordpress site
tutorial-for-using-audio-player-on-non-wordpress-site
Try it out and tell me if you find any problems
julie-feeney
A very creative musician with a fantastic voice, a very sexy Irish accent. She plays eleven instruments on “13 songs” album, including keyboards, alto recorder, treble recorder, harmonium, accordion, violin, harmonica, melodica, and xylophone.
“You bring me down” has found a permanent spot on my play list and is definitely worth a listen
I recently installed a flash mp3 player, so you should be able to play the samples directly from your browser.
Sample songs
Julie Feeney - You Bring Me Down
[audio:http://www.abluestar.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/julie-feeney-you-bring-me-down.mp3]
Julie Feeney - Autopilot
[audio:http://www.abluestar.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/julie-feeney-autopilot.mp3]
Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Feeney
Blog: http://www.juliefeeney.com/blog/
Website: http://www.juliefeeney.com/
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/juliefeeney
Found via aurgasm.us
Birdy Nam Nam consites of 4 DJs, and 8 turn tables, with the simple mission to use a turntable as an actual musical instrument. A Four French men crew, Crazy-B, DJ Pone, DJ Need and Lil’ Mike each man 2 turn tables for a very impressive show. There music can easy stand on its own but its simply amazing to watch them spin. The included YouTube video is stunning.
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PqvDwBOp9Y
Official WebSite: birdynamnam.com
MySpace: birdynamnam
Wiki Article: Birdy_Nam_Nam
Last Fm: Birdy+Nam+Nam
Tag line: A Friendship, That Became a Rivalry, A Rivalry, That Became a Battle.
Its a story about two competing magicians locked in a bitter rivalry that ends with deadly consequences. The story takes place in the picturesque back drop of turn of the century Victorian London with Hugh Jackman as Robert Angier and Christian Bale as Alfred Borden fellow apprentices turned unfortunate rivals, a plot riddled with jealous, obsession, deceit, revenge that keeps you on the edge of your seat.
The stunning setting, fantastic acting, a clever screen play with a twist that I didn’t suspect until the last 5 min of the movie, an ending that ties up all the lose ends, the mystery of how they did there tricks, The Pledge, The Turn, The Prestige… all reason why I loved this moive. Its even got David Bowie as Nikola Tesla.
10/10 one of the best movies of the year.
IMDB: http://imdb.com/title/tt0482571/
Cast: Hugh Jackman as Robert Angier, Christian Bale as Alfred Borden, Michael Caine as Cutter, Piper Perabo as Julia Angier, Rebecca Hall as Sarah Borden, David Bowie as Nikola Tesla
What is an RSS feed?
An RSS (Rich Site Summary) a format for delivering regularly changing web content, designed for Blogs, Newsgroups, ect.
Basically it is a small text document that contains a summery of the recent posts on a Blog or newsgroup that a User/Feed reader/Aggregators can download to check if there is any new contact on a particular website.
One of the biggest benefits for the user is that you can check to see if one or multiple websites have been updated with out having to visit each and every one.
How do I read a RSS feed? What are RSS feed readers and news Aggregators?
Most people use a RSS feed reader, or news Aggregators which is a utility that downloads a RSS feed and displays it in a easy to read format. Most Feed readers also organize your feeds in various formats, (by date, by site, by content)
There are a variety of different RSS feed readers available for all different platforms.
Some popular feed readers include
Where can I go to get RSS feeds?
The RSS feed for this website can be found on the site bar “subscribe to RSS feed”
A list of all the feeds that I regularly read can be found in my opml (Outline Processor Markup Language) file.
My current feeds
Other popular sites that provide RSS feeds, Feedburner
The Vancouver Independant Game Designers Association chapter coordinators cordially invite entrants to create a unique board game based on one of three classic arcade titles: ROBOTRON - JOUST - SPACE INVADERS. This is a FREE event to enter as a designer or player. Spectators are also welcome! This is a perfect chance to prove you’re old school credability, play some games, and win cool prizes.
Games must conform to the following formatting conditions:
Entrants can be individuals or teams. Don’t forget to bring all of your equipment! Winners will be decided by our celebrity-judging panel based on the following criteria:
Prizes courtesy of STRATEGIES Games & Hobbies and the IGDA Vancouver. We ask that designers show up at Strategies by 6PM Sharp! to ensure you can set up your games for a 6:30 start. Here is an jpg file so you can spread the word! For more information please contact Su Skerl.
Update (08/April/2007) - The results have been posted on IGDA website
Create a invisible book shelf
By inserting a “L” bracket behind the bottom book.
Interesting if not absurdly simple.
Often I find that I can find a cab when I need one in this city. So here is a list of all the major Cab companies in Vancouver.
Bel Air/Coquitlam Cabs - 604.942.8080
Black Top/Checker - 604.731.1111
Bonny’s (Burnaby) - 604.435.6655
Kimber (Richmond) - 604.488.8888
MacLure’s - 604.683.6666
North Shore - 604.987.7171
Queen City - 604.526.1166
Richmond Cabs - 604.272.1111
Royal City - 604.521.6666
Select - 604.433.4466
Sunshine (Delta) - 604.594.5444
Sunshine (N. Shore) - 604.988.8888
Van City Cabs - 604.871.1111
Yellow - 604.681.1111
They can not refuse to pay with credit card, if there system is down they can Phone it in to the office. This is a scam to pocket the money from your card. Source
If they say that they are going to take you to a debit machine to get money make sure that they turn off the timer first, how is it your fault that there system is down.
I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with the nagging Windows low disk space warning and offers from my helpful operating system to clean up the junk I have lying around. If you have a drive or two that remains constantly on the edge of full for good reason, you probably share my sentiment.
I went looking for a solution, and I found a few. Most of them involved lengthy descriptions of how to navigate the registry just to add the “NoLowDiskSpaceChecks” key. Here’s a much easier solution; one command line you can cut and paste into any open command prompt window.
SEOmoz.org/ has a great set of 12 tips for people that are planning on creating a new domain.
- Brainstorm 5 Top Keywords
- Make the Domain Unique
- Only Choose Dot-Com Available Domains
- Make it Easy to Type
- Make it Easy to Remember
- Keep the Name as Short as Possible
- Create and Fulfill Expectations
- Avoid Copyright Infringement
- Set Yourself Apart with a Brand
- Reject Hyphens and Numbers
- Don’t Follow the Latest Trends
- Use an Ajax Domain Selection Tool
I was browsing the Make Forums today when I ran across this post LED Shower Head/Faucet
Basically the guy wants to create a small turbine inside of his shower head that would spin and create a current powerful enough to run a LED.
Basically he wanted to create a DIY version of showerstar version
Here’s a quick peek inside: Water enters the shower head through the flow resrictor (1) then travels through the injector plate (2) which directs the water to the waterwheel (3). The water spins the magnetic waterwheel past the stator (4) of the field wincing (5). This hydroelectric generator develops the 2.5 volts at .31 amps which lights the PR-6 bulb.
These fancy version would be possible if you had enough water pressure but it would be much cheaper and easier to use a Throwies. A disposable LED and Battery that lasts 2-3 weeks with a thick layer of silicone. Most of the parts can be bought for less then $1
Ferrofluid
Ferrofluid is a liquid that reacts to magnetism. It is attracted by magnets, pretty similar to iron. This can lead to areas where the liquid partly resists to gravitation when a magnet approaches. Thereby a small bump is formed close to the load stone. This behavior is enabled by magnetic nano-particles that are suspended in a carrier fluid. Normally the particles are coated with a surfactant to prevent their agglomeration. This results in stable ferrofluid dispersions.
In this project Martin Frey builds an array of electronic magnets and connects them to a tiny computer to play the classic game of snake.
More information and a video included. SnOil
This is a pretty interesting project, I looks like he built it
