Cool Gadgets and Things ...

I love my Leatherman like anybody else, but if you want to take your love to the next level :

"Like King Midas whose touch turned everything to gold, artist Adrian Pallarols extends his luxurious style to the Del Rey, Leatherman’s 25th Anniversary luxury tool. Using 18K gold from the Andes for the handles, Adrian crafts each of these with his unique Del Rey design, Tim Leatherman’s signature and the 25th Anniversary crest. Only 25 of the Del Rey model will be produced."

If you want to buy, click here for more info : $40.000USA

Now... imagine fixing some dirty track using this golden tool :-)

I bet, you can work out a cheaper deal if you ask some artist on Internet to customize your "regular" tool.

They only question is ... why ?

Labels: Leatherman for 40.000

How about you ? Do you like FU-KIN? :-)

Labels: Fu-Kin in Japanese

Apple is a control freak. So is Nintendo. That why we may never enjoy these cool games : )

Labels: Nintendo Wii Game ideas

New s/w from AAPL :

Safari is out. It is beta, but I like it so far.

CNET

"Safari 4 includes the new Nitro engine for rendering Web pages, which Apple claims makes Safari not only the world's fastest browser -- something we'll be testing, naturally -- but also the fastest renderer of JavaScript, with rendering speeds 30 times faster than Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 and three times faster than Mozilla's Firefox 3."


But what I like is HTML5 video and audio tags ;-) Hope it will kill freaking Flash and we can just use MP3 and MPEG4

Falling Leaves Animation: http://webkit.org/blog-files/leaves/index.html [webkit.org]
Bouncing Box Animation: http://webkit.org/blog-files/bounce.html [webkit.org]
Rotate and Fade Animation: http://webkit.org/blog-files/pulse.html [webkit.org]
CSS Recipes for Effects: http://developer.apple.com/safari/articles/webcontent/cssrecipes.html [apple.com]
CSS Gradients:http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/documentation/InternetWeb/Conceptual/SafariVisualEffectsProgGuide/Gradients/chapter_2_section_1.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008032-CH7-SW11 [apple.com]
Video tag (requires Quicktime): http://webkit.org/blog/140/html5-media-support/ [webkit.org]
CSS Gradients: http://webkit.org/blog/175/introducing-css-gradients/ [webkit.org]
Background Shaped Clipping: http://webkit.org/blog/164/background-clip-text/ [webkit.org]
Local Database Example: http://webkit.org/misc/DatabaseExample.html [webkit.org]


If you use 1Password you will loose 1P button. To get it back you will need to do 2 things
1) Edit configuration file or get Beta of 1Password ( http://support.agilewebsolutions.com/showthread.php?t=11637)
2) For me it also required to right clic on tool bar and add 1P button from "Customize toolbar"

I have no doubts that Agile Web Solutions will provide update very soon ( Safari 4 Beta was released just today)

I am a bit fun of HTML5 and hope it will kill scary closed proprietary technologies like Flash and Silverlight.
Why we need some stupid plugins when we can just use video tag that is perfectly scriptable?
Same goes for simple JS animations. It is not a big deal to do in HTML ;-)

It comes with 150 features and I do love what Apple did for us, developers

Developers, developers, developers ! ( :-))

Great Job Apple !

And HAPPY 54th Birthday , Steve Jobs! ( and ...live till 120! as we say :-))

Labels: Safari 4 Beta

1. Check if this is for you: Find a snow resort nearby or fly there. Take a few beginners lessons ;-) It normally come with rentals and lift. Here is example

While you can rent ski, boots and poles (advice: skip poles when you start ) you will need a winter clothing.

Snow-boots, waterproof coat and pants. You need warm, not soggy socks ( wool or special synthetic). Do not double sock. You should dress in layers: start with "long johns" ( pijamas) or use excellent Underarmor wear. Put few more layers on it if needed or just coat and pants if weather is too warm ( around freezing). Use wool or synthetic, not cotton. Say NO to Blue jeans :-) It will turn to ice. The reason you want to avoid cotton it will keep moisture. You do not want that, you want fabric remove it from you :-) Most high-tech fabrics do that. They will not smell nice after that :-) But they will do their job to keep your comfortable :-) Then just put it all trough a laundry machine as usual.

Goggles : get it. Snow will blind you. Hat or helmet is also nice to have to keep you warm.

If you will be comfortable, warm and dry you will have more fun.

Now, get gear, take lessons :-)

Hooked?

Now ...

2. Read books

These two are considered absolute BEST. Do not fall for hype books that you may spot. Start with these two:






3. Watch some videos:

Here is a nice linked session :


























4. Watch some more :-)










5. Get your own gear.

I do not mean 20 years old give away free skis and boots. :-) As cool and great as it may be... chances are you will not have much fun compare to even used gear from a few years ago. If you got a long straight ski ... well... ;-)

Get modern staff. Period. ;-)

New or used. I like to "Play it Again" :-) but end of season ( FEBRUARY) sales are great too !

Most important: you should REALY get what you like. Boots should fit. Ski should fit and be type you need.
Bindings have to be PROPERLY set and tested by shop. Pay this 10-20$!

You may get away without poles initially and this is a good way to start.















6. Do you need a Helmet ? Read here


Other reason you may want to get helmet anyway is

a) show example to your kids
b) film your rides with this ABSOLUTLY BEST gadget that works great with ski helmet:



See what people do with it:



What is SUPER about this little and cheap gadget is that it is has many mounts and can be used under water, on snow and in the air and operated in glove. Most important it is 170 degree: WIDE! It is like you see what you saw or even more. SUPER COOL!


Also, they joke that if you ski... you probably have 20 years left to go :-) People do ski in their 90's :-)


7. Now do it ! Have fun! See you in the mountains!

Labels: Alpine ski lessons

Yeah ... this one is a bummer, Apple :-)

They said it was done to "protect" iPhone board, but they found a better way, apparently in 3G :-)

Connector in iPhone 1G is still very standard, compare to most other phones, but it is just ... err ... a bit narrow :-)

It probably helped Apple brand : manufacturers had to put "iPhone compatible" on boxes ( Apple itself is not much in headphones business ... yet and only made some kind of OK headphones just a few month ago) It also probably made people hang on with silly white original headphones from Apple for a bit longer :-)


While connection is fixed in 3G, there are still so many of us who enjoy iPhone 1G...

Many manufactures already switched to slim plastic design of connectors that works with iPhone 1G... but you may have old sets that you like. I do! There are many adapter available today. Here are just a few.

I use one from DLO that has split as well. Here is a smaller version:



This is also a good brand and should work fine:




Now there are a minimalist adapters available, but they may damage your iPhone if you not too careful and hit the adapter:




You can try your luck with no brand, if you believe a good reviews are true ( but it is still a risk :-)) NOT RECOMMENDED even for a simple thing like this adapter. Bad quality connector can be VERY annoying with sound :-)



But ....

Now.... DO NOT *EVER* BUY anything that is 0.01$ or cheap: read review. There are some junk available in this department as well :-)

If you want to get fancy and have MIC so you can answer calls and still use ANY headphones, you can get some thing like this:



So, bottom line, here is how we can classify :

1) size
2) split ( 2 headphones) or no split
3) flexible or not
4) Brand or no brand
5) support MIC
6) Has MIC
7) Has iPhone music control ( pause, play )


Btw: Pay attention on MIC : you may not like how it works. It is always a very personal and sensitive part of such appliance, just like
your favorite headphones, that brought us here in the first place :-)

Labels: iPhone 1G earphones adapter

As I found out recently: it is ABSOLUTLY critical part of my ski boots
dry strategy: I do not know what I would do without it. During winter
break when we went to ski more than usual I became concerned I am not
get ing enough. I doubt real email spam can be that usefull , but I
remember when post-Gorbachev economy in Russia started to pick up and
free newspaper started to junk peoples mail boxes , some one told me
they had: ' Please read before use' printed over: well , they mean a
bathroom use of cource:-)

When I was a kid I used to have a electronic blocks, so I can build all kind of things like radio or buzzer.

Now as technology advance we put more electronics in single block and play is more fun.

siftables

I would suggest a cheap knock off here : before price on these blocks go down ( I bet one cost quite a bit now, so having collection of 20 will be like ... a lot of money even if one is only 20$ , that I believe for now is more like 500$ or so, but eventually it will be cheap, I hope )

There are similar toy already exist in Japan : I saw it in Tokyo Hands. It is a blocks that have a person inside. You can connect blocks and make kind of house and stick man can go see each other ;-) It is black and white and has less capabilities, but still cost like any electronic toy would.

So, idea, is simple: use a good old "do-it-all" computer. and camera and ... duh ... projector. Well, it is not perfect and not as seamless of course, but ... much more affordable. The key here is to color blocks the way it will be both easy for computer camera to detect ( may be we need IR camera and light ) and for projector to reflect. There are a cool very small ( pocket ) projectors now that are very low power, but seems perfect for such applications and you can probably hang it low over table on some kind of tripod.

Well, so it is posable to build both blocks, but the issue remains: after we all saw a nice demo, not it is time to write a real s/w that do some thing ( funny, or educational or practical). This is a critical point where most fails. Even iPhone with tons of it applications, still in position of very low utilization of it capabilities for majority of applications.

Alternatively we may think about applications first, then invent a device that will allow implementation: it can be done in parallel, but no matter how cool technology is it will remain a toy at best ( M$ surface ?) till it will be widespread and build upon ( like iPhone) :-) my 2 cents and yeah ... these cubes are cool, I want some !!! ( and SDK to program for!)

Labels: Siftables, the toy blocks that think

U.S. And Russian Satellites Collide !!!

Fucking WOW! I think this is a FIRST time this kind of shit happens: we got way too much junk there :-)

"In an unprecedented space collision, a commercial Iridium communications satellite and a defunct Russian satellite ran into each other Tuesday above northern Siberia, creating a cloud of wreckage, officials said today. The international space station does not appear to be threatened by the debris, they said, but it's not yet clear whether it poses a risk to any other military or civilian satellites.

"They collided at an altitude of 790 kilometers (491 miles) over northern Siberia Tuesday about noon Washington time," said Nicholas Johnson, NASA's chief scientist for orbital debris at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "The U.S. space surveillance network detected a large number of debris from both objects."

Air Force Brig. Gen. Michael Carey, deputy director of global operations with U.S. Strategic Command, the agency responsible for space surveillance, said initial radar tracking detected some 600 pieces of debris. He identified the Russian spacecraft as Cosmos 2251, a communications relay station launched in June 1993, and said the satellite is believed to have been non-operational for the past 10 years or so.

"As of about 12 hours ago, I think the head count was up (to around) 600 pieces," Carey told CBS News late today. "It's going to take about two days before we get a solid picture of what the debris fields look like. But you, I think, can imply that the majority of that should be probably along the same line as the original orbits." "


Read full text here.

There is a cool site that track such kind of close encounters LINK

Labels: U.S. And Russian Satellites Collide

It even detects a face on ... snowman!!! Wow! I love this company!!!

Labels: BillG finally lost it

Here is benchmarks

My M$ loving
( and very famous , he made it on CNN no less ! ) friend Mario just licked his comapny ass ( or should we say a "feeding hand" ) here, but I wonder how Snow Leopard would compare? I think it will kick Windowz ass really bad.

OS X is already fast and much better than Windows, but that is not the point. Most important that even Open Source can beat M$ I/O by a nice margin. And I/O is what you feel when you work with files. Just look on benchmarks yourself.

Happy computing !

Labels: Windows 7 is not as fast as ... Linux

Labels: Why Japanese girls like Mac

Labels: Why you have to buy Mac

Labels: The Internet is for Porn

If you been wondering how to render a nice looking gem stone, check this nice article out!

Labels: how to draw a diamond

If you like .NET you are lucky. Read this


Why you ask me ? The main reason would be if you like to use a cool enviroment like Unity

Static linking does the trick that allow you application to AppStore without breaking a strict Apple rules and there are rumors that few of 10.000s of applications actually use Mono 2.X

Labels: C# .NET and Mono on iPhone no jailbreaking