Archive for August, 2008

This is the end my only friend: Goodbye to East Point

You know since September last year, I have been working for DoubleClick you see. And we have been located in a business park named East Point here in Dublin. Then after a while, I learned about the proposed deal of Google to purchase the company. So the anti-trust agencies looked into it, US eventually approved, Europe followed a few months later. On March 11 this year, the deal was sealed and DoubleClick become part of the Google Group of companies, becoming their biggest purchase yet.

This ultimately meant for us to become Google employees. Also, ultimately, they would want us to be with them – meaning that we would have to leave this office and be in the Europlex here in Dublin.

You see thing is, that in seven years I have been here I have seen some of the big players in the market. All of them were more or less the same – big office, big canteen, only the people around me changed. Don’t get me wrong – I am in contact with some of them from the old days. Man am I glad to still know these people. But generally, the offices and style and everything was the same. When I came to DoubleClick, it was different. No big office, great people, no canteen, a small great group of people.

Now it’s been almost a year in here. And today is the last day in this office. In this office I got to know great people, got new friends, had great times. Some of the discussions we had over lunch I will never forget, because they were so memorable and just fun =) Last lunch today, last conversations, last everything in the kitchen. Last pool games today. They gonna move the pool table too, but away from us. With that pool table I associate many great memories, many great games I will never forget.

The constellation we had in the office won’t be the same anymore too, they gonna put our friends over in Finance into another building. So we’ll only see them at lunch in the canteen or so.

Everything is coming to an end eventually, nothing lasts forever. But I am thankful to have been in this office with these people, having met all of those and got to know many. I mean I will still be in the same job and all, still see my colleagues and friends. But it’s not like the same office, which kinda makes me sad. But well… on the other hand, like I always say, change is good… things need to be kept in motion.

So on my way to the office I took a few photos of the things I have always seen when walking in. Tonight, I’ll walk out of here for the last time.


The East Point sign


We were in the ground floor, left hand side


The East Point Plaza building.

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Ryanair, upgrade your servers, and do some math

Dear Ryanair,

you know there are people out there who actually want to book flights. But can’t do it, because of these reasons:

1) You say the flight is so and so much, but in reality you add 20.00 EUR for some unknown reason – which is interesting when the price is 186 EUR, and you have one of these 3V disposable credit cards, and it’s worth 200 EUR. Suddenly the history shows you try to deduct 206 EUR ?! LOL WUT

2) Buy some server horse power – freaking okay?! I am now trying to book something for the 5th quadrazillion times, and I only once – ONCE!!!! – got to the payment stage. At which it told me that the card was declined. LOL freaking WUT

That’s it, I’m done ranting.

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Pimp My MythTV: Now with YouTube support

So this weekend I was kinda bored and was thinking about something productive I can do so I wouldn’t be sitting at home, alone, lonely, and dying from boredom. Well of course some geeky stuff comes to my mind. I was thinking that it would be cool if MythTV, my PVR solution of choice, would have YouTube support. According to MythTVNews, there was no way up until then for YouTube to be integrated. The plugin Mythbrowser doesn’t do Flash, neither can any MythTV software play FLV files.

However, MythTV does provide convenient options to change that, like use a different browser. And suddenly we are in business here.

So… what exactly did I do? Basically I created a two web pages – one is standard HTML using an external Javascript as help, and a PHP file which connects to the API of YouTube. In this case I started off with the Featured list (which is the last 25 videos that have been featured. Ah yes, thanks IBM).

The main page contains div elements which house the information, such as the big image, title and description. The selector image is a simple Photoshop of about 5 minutes, and is controlled by the up and down keys on the keyboard. The script in the back checks where we are, and if the bottom or top is hit, it acts accordingly (probably a real cheesy approach to do that). The list itself on the right side is done with the PHP page and displayed in a borderless iframe element, which in turn is controlled by the Javascript.

I could have taken simple screenshots, but you might not believe me. So I took some photos of my MythTV UI as it is right now, and how the YouTube UI looks like.

Again: The YouTube thing is web-based and not a direct part of MythTV… but it was the only way I think this could be achieved.

The theme in MythTV is called “Pear-ody” and you can get it here.

If you’re interested, I have put up the piece of work for download if you like, so you can extend it or beef it up. GET IT HERE.

Now for the photos!


My MythTV once loaded


YouTube is now available for ya pleasure dude


Featured only – for now


Here at last. YouTube from MythTV. The AppleTV way.


A video playing from my written UI. It works alright…


As a comparison: this is the original YouTube UI as it is on AppleTV machines right now. I think I’m close.

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Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy”, on a Theramin

In case you don’t know: a Theramin is a music instrument invented by a russian named Theramin somewhere back in the 1910’s. It is played without being touched.

And this is what you can do with it, almost a hundred years after its invention.

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UFO Phenomena: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs

The theory of UFO’s visiting our world stretches back in time to interesting periods. Sightings allegedly go back to the roman empire, and even to old cultures like the Inca, Maya, and the Egyptians. Some say the explosion of UFO sightings in the last 50 years has to do with the fact that we learned to fly, beat gravity, be able to get from place to place faster than before. Another reason some say is that ever since we fired the first nuke, these beings became alerted to our technological advancement. One thing is for sure though… Old cultures speak of beings who are ‘men but no men’, or ‘giants’, or ‘one armed gods’. They also talk about glorious ’sky wagons’, and often vanished into the skies. They of course talked about their Gods. But what if these Gods actually were alien?

Now here’s another thing. We cannot standardize our development, and now rapid development, as the benchmark as to precisely when a species like us is able to develop very advanced technologies. Other civilizations, if they exist, may in fact already have achieved super technologies, enabling them to travel faster than the speed of light at will. If that is the case, then we probably are the standard. A pre-space-travelling society, making gradual technological advancement, starting to understand basic fundamental knowledge of how the universe works.

Having that said, we should ask the question if indeed other civilizations have formed before us, or way before us? And if so, did they travel through space? Were they explorers? Did they set out to explore other planets and worlds? Well it would appear illogical to me to dismiss this possibility.

But then, how far back in time could alien visitors come here? What is the earliest possible time? Well most of us are under the impression of Roswell. That, my friends, was by far not the first time. My personal belief still lies within the Pyramids, I think alien visitor planned them as gigantic machines in terms or prisms. That was approx. 11,000 years B.C. – the planning and start of construction little later.

Even though this seems to be pretty far fetched, a find by an archeologist team, if real and true, shatters all theories and timelines about when alien people might possible been here first. Also if true, it would force us to reconsider history alltogether.

An archeology team claims to have found an alien vehicle. What is strange is this sentence? That an archeology team found it. And they also claim to be from the dinosaur age – from 150 million years ago.

News released today about a secret U.S. Government project to analyze an allegedly extraterrestrial craft has a unique twist.

This craft did not crash in 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico.

According to the anonymous sources, it crashed approximately 150 million years ago during the age of the dinosaurs.

Apparently the age was determined with a method which could find out the age of an object. They say:

The sources also reportedly told Martinez, “The object was believed to be an alien spacecraft that had crashed approximately 200 million years ago according to the archaeological team. The site subsequently was examined by a USAF recovery team, which then put the age of the alien craft at approximately 150 million years ago.”

However what is even more strange about this find, is that apparently the alien visitors came to abduct dinosaurs.

“The alien craft contained two highly decomposed alien bodies and decayed animals, which were apparently abducted by these alien beings. The animals were small dinosaurs on board the alien craft.”

Realistically speaking: yes – it is possible that an alien culture could already have been at such an advancement of space travel and technology. The universe is believed to be 13.7 billion years of age, so a few hundred million years would make no difference to the evolution of life.

What however boggles my mind here is, that 1) those people have been here that early already and pretty much know the history of our planet down to last bit, and 2) that they came to abduct dinosaurs. To what end? I don’t know. Right now, I can only guess as to what their goal is with abductions going on with us, but that’s something for another post.

If this is really true and this craft IS 150 million years old, then we will have no choice as to seriously reconsider life on our world, and the probability of life in the galaxy. My personal opinion? Yes – they are very real people, and they are here.

What are they here for? Well if they were hostile, we’d know it by now, and would blow up their mothership with some Windows 95 virus :D

Joint Recon Study Group: Ancient crashed UFO claimed to be from dinosaur age, 150 million years ago

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Fatal exception at Super Bikes

So I went to see the new X-Files movie, and usually I have a game at the consoles there. Well no one is gonna ride a bike today. Good job Windows :p

photo.jpg
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