Save the Cheerleader ?

So Claire needs some superpower to do a backflip from the tower ?

I know some people who don't need that to do so !

My Two first GreaseMonkey scripts

I just created my two first scripts for the geniusly useful greasemonkey engine, so I thought I'd share this with you !
For those of you not familiar with GreaseMonkey, this is a Firefox addon that basically executes some Javascrit code inside your browser once the page has been loaded. This allows to modify the UI, add some functionalities, etc to some website, without having to actually modify the website itself since everything is done on the client side. I'll try to write another post to share with you some of the script I use on daily basis !
Anyhow, I also have several computers at home, and one of them is a blackbox running the Azureus bittorrent client, with the HTMLWebUI interface enabled. This allows me to remotely control the engine, and upload, stop, monitor the various torrents I'm downloading. At some point, I was fed up with having to search for the torrent on some torrent search site, then right click to copy the link location of the torrent, and paste that in the WebUI interface. So I created two scripts to facilitate that process.
The first scripts adds a link in the mininova search page to directly send the torrent file to the remote azureus. So I don't need to right click, paste, change tab and all ... Torrent download is only one click away !
The second script goes the opposite way. I sometimes have torrents that don't start for some reasons. So usually I would go back to mininova, search for the thing I was downloading and re-upload it to Azureus. I accelerated this process by adding a link that directly gets you to the mininova search page with the correct search terms. Again, one click away from finding the perfect torrent !
You can get those scripts on my UserScripts page... Enjoy ! And if you have any question, don't hesitate to ask !

Another great race ... Can't wait for Brasil !

Another week-end, and another post on Formula One. By now you know the deal : early wakeup equals Formula One while waking up ! And this race again was really interesting for its first 75% !
It was held in China, where again the weather played some nice little games with the drivers minds. Started under light rain, the track started to dry out. This caused good drivers to overpass others quite often during the first quarter of the course, and since the track offers some nice settings for that, it was real nice to watch. When the track dried out, drivers started using the slick tires (the one that can only work on dry tracks), just to realize that after 10 laps the rain came again, sending a few drivers in the grass. The great thing was that conditions where changing from laps to laps, and the drivers with wet/dry tires where having different difficulties on every lap. So the time between each driver where highly flexible, thus letting you hope for a great finish.
With all that, Hamilton was in first, with Raikonnen chasing him. Going out to change tires, Hamilton went off track and stopped, leaving the track all open for the former to win the course, in front of Alonso and Massa. Too bad for Kubica who was actually going to win it if he did not have a problem with his transmission. The last 15 laps where ran in this order, with no major changes and actions, which reminded us all how boring can Formula One be when there is no action !
The great thing is that the winner of this season championship won't be known until the next and last course in Brasil. Basically Alonso could win it if he wins it, Raikonnen could triumph if the two McLaren were to fail, but for sure the one with the most chances is Hamilton, who for his first season as a driver could win the championship ... Can't wait for the 21st of October to see that !

A new lipdub by Rumeur Publique

A French company, specializing in PR, has just released a new Lip Dub. The song is called Louxor, and is from French artist Philippe Katerine.
21 people, really good lip syncing, great office space, and an ending where everyone falls down on each others .... A real success and big round of applause for you guys girls (mostly ;-))

Formula One or Stock Car Racing ?

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Update : YouTube had to remove the videos due to copyright infrigments ... I'm trying to find the video some place else ...
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It was a long time since my last live F1 Grand Prix, but this Sunday I managed to catch the last 20 minutes of the 2007 Japan one.
For the past few years, I found out that the show was not as interesting as it used to be (more strategy, less action), and the retirement of Sir Schumacher did not really help me in waking up early to catch the live action !
Anyhow, on Sunday, after an hectic night, and an early wakeup thanks to my son, I watch that one ! Really hard conditions, with lots of rain. On board cameras where showing the difficulty for the drivers to drive and find the best curves on this slippery racetrack !
And then came the last lap ... First the 2nd and 3rd driver, aka Kovalainen and Raikkonen, switch places two times to remain in the same order in a battle than reminded us all of good all times when overlapping was not an exception ! What a lap for the first one who is really in his first years of driving, on a car that has not proven much this year (Renault).
But the most amazing was the battle between Massa and Kubica !
Here is the video from outside view (Loooove the Japanese guys ;-))

You see there that the racetrack was not really wide enough for those two guys, and that the lap was really closer to Stock Car than Formula One ! I still cannot believe that they did both finish the race on the finish line, and not in the gravels !
But even more impressing, is the onboard view of Massa's car ... Just old your breath people, because you are going to see why these people are considered the best drivers around :

Here are the two videos next to one another :

And what seems like a slightly longer version of the first one :

Another Lip Dub

I have featured a certain number of lip dubs here on this blog, and here is a new one by a French Travel Agency (Yeaaaahhh !). It is on the song by Mika called Lollipop, and again, I think its a great one !

Are you of the logic or artistic kind ?

I came across the following picture while browsing my feeds, and it really is impressive :

If you look at it, you should see a girl spinning in circle. The funny thing is that not everyone sees her spinning in the same direction. If you see her spinning clockwise, then you are of the logical kind, meaning the left part of your brain is the more active one. However if you see her spinning counter-clockwise, then you are of the artistical kind, meaning the right sight of your brain is the more active one.
I personally started seeing her spinning clockwise (ouf :-D) but then she started to change. Apparently depending upon when I see her head or her toes first (using the elevator on my browser), I see her spinning in different directions... Doc please tell me what this mean ;-). Is there really an artistical inner me, because I have been doubting that over the year :-D.
And you what do you see, and how do you feel about it ?

Seen on Blog De Buit

About being "green" just for the sake of it

I just finished reading this article on VentureBeat thanks to a post on PMarca where the following criticism about Prius owners appears :

It’s like wealthy investors giving money to “art museums instead of to starving people”

Why do I like this sentence ? Probably because I think that today a lot people cheer on ecology, making pseudo sacrifices for the planet ... But at the end of the day do so, more because it is a huge trend, than because of real personal conviction. By the way this sentence was issued by Vinod Khosla who is one of the most influent investor in Greeen Technology from the Silicon Valley... Just to show you that it's not coming from some Oil backed company's CEO like you may have imagined.

The other reason why I like this sentence is that people have a tendency to focus their vision on one detail, but don't really look into the big picture. Yes it hurts to see artists in the need and not being able to continue their passion. But what about those millions of people that just can't eat or drink everyday ?

It's of course an easy to take shortcut since things are far more complicated than that, but next time you speak about ecology, take a minute or two to see whether the action you are taking is really relevant, whether it's just a drop in the sea, or there's just something more important to do for your planet ...

Tetris mania !

I'm sure most of you played tetris at some point in time ... And I even include the little one who am sure have come across his really simple but addictive game on their next generation mobile phone !
I found out this video of one tetris master ! It's a bit long, but if you go near the end, you'll see someone who knows how to play without even seeing the bricks !

Via Kek

Samba Configuration

I'm in the process of playing with a linux server box I setup @ home on a really old computer.
Since I'm not system administrator expert, I tend to always forget how I did things ... So over the next couple of days/weeks, I'll post here some info I don't want to loose, or tips I found out while working with my box !

FYI, I installed an Ubuntu Server edition, because I did not have too much computing power, and my graphical card (SIS6215) seems really difficult to configure for X server !

So here we go with the first thing I don't want to forget : Samba configuration for easy sharing with my other Windows based computers. I found this really nice HOWTO, that explains simply how to do it ... The steps are well written, so I won't bother making it better ;-)