June 2005 Archives
This is way too cool! Google released Google earth, a Windows desktop application to access their geographical data.
Saying java is better because it works on all platforms is like saying anal sex is better because it works on all genders.
-–Mike V.
A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of the dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Broni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leaned out the window and asked the shepherd...
"If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?"
The shepherd looked at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looked at his peacefully-grazing flock and calmly answered, "Sure."
The yuppie parked his car, whipped out his IBM Thinkpad and connected it to a cell phone, then he surfed to a NASA page on the internet where he called up a GPS satellite navigation system, scanned the area, and then opened up a database and an Excel spreadsheet with complex formulas. He sent an email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, received a response. Finally, he prints out a 130 page report on his miniaturized printer then turns to the shepherd and says....... "You have exactly 1586 sheep."
"That is correct; take one of the sheep." said the shepherd.
He watches the young man select one of the animals and bundle it into his car. Then the shepherd says: "If I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my animal?"
"OK, why not." answered the young man.
"Clearly, you are a consultant." said the shepherd.
"That's correct." says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"
"No guessing required." answers the shepherd. "You turned up here although nobody called you. You want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked, and you don't know crap about my business.... Now give me back my dog."
Our car is about to reach 300.000 km, and the bills of the garage tell us that it is time to say goodbye to our Fiat Punto and start looking for something else.
The first question ---new or second hand?--- was quickly answered; as the second hand market is almost inexistent here in Spain. Everybody buys new and keeps driving it until the car reaches the same stage as our current car. We will probably end up buying a new car, unless we are lucky enough to buy a showroom model.
The second question ---what kind of car?--- was also easily answered: we live in the city centre, so big cars are out of the question. And considered my length and the fact that we regularly use the car to go away with our friends, really small cars are also not suited for us. So that leaves us with the regular tourist cars and MPVs.
Since every brand offers these models, we made up a list of all dealers in Lleida and started to visit them last Saturday. Unfortunately, almost all of them were closed, since the day before was a bank holiday! In the end we managed to visit the dealers for Peugeot and Renault, and came home with a lot of information about these cars.
We also bought some magazines with the typical list of all brands and models in the back, and while browsing all that information I quickly noticed that I simply had way too much information. I need a way to get rid of all surplus of information ---I won't buy a Ferrari and don't have the slightest idea whether 150 Nm is OK or not--- so fired up Google to search for table in the car magazines in text or Excel format to play with.
Without success. It seems like all the car sites have been made only for car-enthusiasts. Usually the first selection you have to make is the brand and the model, which is exactly the information I want the site to give me! I am very disappointed in what I found. When I am looking for a mobile phone of €50, I have hundreds of sites to help me, but when I am making one of the biggest purchases of my life, I fall into the hands of the salesmen without any help from the Internet.
The temperature is slowly rising to a level where there are only two places to stay: inside an air-conditioned office or on the beach. This weekend I choose the latter, resulting in a lot of time to dream...
I thought about this site, and how I am only using a fraction of the available disk space and bandwidth. What a waste! What if I just sold the space and bandwidth I am not using? Should be easy enough, I already us cPanel to manage the site, and I know that an additional script called WebHost Manager is available in which I can create new users and assign hosting packages. I could easily implement this without any additional cost.
What else should I need? A way to receive payments.... Most hosting providers I dealt with use 2CheckOut to receive credit card payments, and I could open a Paypal account as well. Both payment services take a percentage of the sales amount, both come without any set-up costs or monthly charges, so that's free of risk.
What else? I need to communicate with my clients. Some kind of helpdesk software, which also manages the client's orders and invoices and which can be linked to the two services above to cash in and preferably to WHM so accounts are generated automatically ---after all, I rather spend my time on the beach. There are some very good and complex packages available, but at this moment I am still dreaming, so I don't want to spend too much money, and certainly don't want to pay monthly charges. Google found phpCoin, which looks like it could be a good face towards my clients.
Mmmm, sounds like I could do it. Of course I have to spend some more time on the beach to think about details as the composition of the hosting packages I am going to offer and the name of my little hosting company ---I already have some ideas---, and after that I need even more hours to implement all this and make a stunning design for the site. Will this dream ever come true???
This small HTML file will on some computers drive Windows into a blue screen:
<html>
<body>
<img src="image.jpg" width="9999999" height="9999999">
</body>
</html>
Try it out if you want by clicking here.
[via VoWe]
A little bit more than a year ago, I started dumping links on this site. In a year time I added 650 interesting links, which serve as my knowledge base. It happens more and more that I start looking for information in the linkdump before going to Google. If I know that I have read something before, the chances are quite big I have dumped it there. The linkdump is my little section of the internet, with only the themes I am interested in.
Wie werd wat, waar, wanneer, waarmee en wat hield hij boven zijn hoofd? Wat heeft het getal 1251 hiermee te maken?
