This weekend I watched The Mist for the second time, on dvd. This is a movie adaptation of a Stephen King story, done by Frank Darabont, who also did The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. The first time I watched it, I wasn't sure what to expect. Quite a few of the movie adaptations of King stories have been rather unsatisfying, or plain disappointing. Not this one though. Regardless of how well it follows the novella the movie is an incredible watch all by itself. (I understand it follows it closesly, except for the ending, which Darabont improved to King's liking.) It has been too long since I read the story, so I can't say anything about that.

The video is one of the songs used in the movie, and even without the movie, it sets a very dark mood. The clip (not related to the movie) does so as well, but that is rather unrelated to my post or the movie. A little more about the movie after the clip, possibly with spoilers.




Here be possible SPOILERS ... be warned. [Read More!]

Or is there just something wrong with my computer or Google's service?




[Edited to add: for those who wonder, it lasted 15 min or so and then all was normal again. My guess is a Google hiccup.]

The latest hype in social networking gadgets land is Poken, a usb device that lets you connect to other users carrying a poken. Why? Well, because it is an easy way to exchange your social networking information when you happen to be somewhere without access to a computer.

If you carry a Poken and happen to meet someone else carrying one, you make both devices touch (yes, that may sound dirty, but if you look at the pictures of the Pokens you'll see it's rather more innocent) and have them exchange information. In other words, I can set up my device so it knows I'm ThisPerson on Flickr and ThatPerson on Hyves. As soon as our pokens touch, your poken will download that information and store it, while my poken will download your profile information and store it. At home I can plug it into the computer, and have all the info, so I can click through to your social network profile page.

Something like this is kind of like an electronic business card. It would come in handy at parties or conferences, where you may run into interesting people you'd like to add to your network. Instead of trying to remember their aliases or entering their info in your phone/write it down, the poken just stores everything.

Right now, Poken supports a number of big networks, but is sadly lacking Myspace support: badoo, bebo, facebook, flickr, hi5, hyves, linkedin, netlog, ning, plaxo, skyrock, spoke, studivz, twitter, usgang, viadeo, xing.

For those a little reluctant to share information, the poken has a 'ghost' option that only shares very limited information. If I understand it correctly, a poken can store up to 64 contacts, but I doubt I will ever meet that many people in a single day. Pokens are sold at some online stores, through its own website, or by people all over the world. (Like me, so feel free to contact me.) There are four different kinds of pokens, and online store prices start around € 15/$20. Sales are done through viral marketing and they work kind of like the online referral schemes: selling pokens earns you points for discounts, and any poken you sold that connects to a new poken makes you points too. I wonder if it is a coincidence that the Dutch verb 'to buy' (kopen) is so similar to poken ...

[Edit, Feb 15: here is a Poken coupon or promo code (or if you prefer in Dutch, kortingsbon) for a 10% discount on your purchase: PL3PKSL8NSDOYUWTMSLP just enter it when you purchase yours.]

For years I have been taking pictures, which I then store in folders, grouped by year. Not a very advanced way to organize my pictures, but it served me well. Recently I decided I should try and set up some kind of slideshow option of the most interesting pictures. This can be a nice way to show off some pictures when people come over. It is a great conversation starter, or can just serve as moving scenery, for people who don't want to participate in any conversation. However, this would require sorting my pictures and organizing them into better groups.

It seems unlikely that anyone will be interested in shots of my new gadgets. There are also plenty of pictures I took just because I found something interesting at the time, but I have no wish to share those pictures. And last but not least, I don't like displaying pictures of people, if those people have objected or have never been asked for permission.

I wanted a way to look at all my pictures and to move them into different folders, without having to use the thumbnail view of windows. That feature just blows with 200+ pictures in a folder. I figured it would also be nice if I could create actual albums and slideshows. If a slideshow can show randomized pictures, even better. Once I am done sorting my pictures, I also plan to make them available over my network so I can display them using my Xbox. For starters though, a slideshow on my desktop will be good enough.

A brief search led me to MyAlbum, which is presented as “Simple Image Cataloger and Slideshow”. It seems the “simple” refers to its ease of use, not its functionality, since this program can do a lot. This is my choice for photo organizing for now, especially since it allowed me to organize four years worth of pictures in an hour or so.

I created four kinds of folders, based on subject. (If you let MyAlbum create actual albums, you don't have to create folders, but since I want to use these folders with other software as well, this seemed to make sense.) I then opened one of the folders-by-year in the program, waited for the thumbnails to load, and selected photos that matched one of the subjects. Which I then simply moved (using the program's menu option) to the right folder. Going through the images three times left me with four folders (including the one I started with). I repeated this for the other years. Sure, I could have loaded all folders in one go, but that would have been way too many photos and that would make things slow and annoying.

Yes, I only used MyAlbum to actually organize the photos in the most basic way and this doesn't really do the program justice. This program will let you add keywords, create albums and slidehows (even self running ones), add transitions, and much more. A powerhouse for your local photos, but also just an amazing tool to quickly organize your photos into folders.

Many years ago, I bought my first mobile phone. At the time I wanted to make sure certain people could reach me at all times, in case of an emergency. This has always been the main reason why I carry my phone with me at all times outside of my house. After a while, I upgraded the phone to newer models and eventually to a smartphone/PDA. I still hardly ever use it to make calls, except for when I am running late for an appointment. The phone has always been just one of those things, and sometimes I will forget it for a day, and that is fine too.

Until a couple of days ago, when I was supposed to go somewhere after work. That day I forgot to bring my phone, and all day I felt uncomfortable. I never realized how much I depend on the phone to feel “safe” and comfortable knowing I can always get in touch with someone if I need to. I have noticed this with other people before. Now I have reached this phase. What's next, actually using the phone for stupid small talk calls to people I am about to meet in five minutes? Someone better stop me before that happens!

It must have been over five years ago when I first compiled a simple html page that would display a bunch of my favorite online comics. I still use that page and manually update it, so it always shows the comics of today. Yes, no doubt there are programs that do this, but my simple method works for me. Even though lately I have been able to subscribe to an increasing number of comics by rss.

I love reading comics. Sometimes one of the comics or cartoons is so funny or appropriate, I want to share it with people. This is usually limited to taping a printed comic on one of my walls at work. Sometimes it would be cool to show people on one of my sites what made me laugh that day. Most comic sites online have a very strict reuse policy. I.e., don't do it! In fact, years ago when I found some funny cartoons I contacted publishers to ask if it would be ok to display a single cartoon on my non-profit (very low volume, we're talking 10 visitors a month) web page. The only way I could do that, was to pay a hefty sum of money. Hah. No thanks.

Comics.com is one of the comics sites that has been around for a long time. I checked it out and didn't like it. It would only email comics and I didn't like html mails. Still don't. Recently, comics.com got a major overhaul. And lo and behold, now there are lots of social options. A lot of comics now have great options like view full size, votes, share to social networking and bookmarking sites, printing, and embedding of comics. Which is what I intend to give a try at the end of this post. Best of all when it comes to easy reading of comics: if you register, you can create your own comics page that contains your selected comics, get your comics by mail, or as rss feed ... That is awesome.

Available options probably depend on artist or publisher policies. I notice some comics don't offer the share and embed options, while others (such as Dilbert) can't be selected for your comics page/rss. A good thing Dilbert has its own page, complete with rss, share, and embed options.

It looks like the embed option simply gives you the proper html including the correct image link. Since it is basic html, it should work on any site. So, let's see if I am right by pasting a recent Pearls Before Swine episode.



Oh, this is going to be fun!

The Dutch optician/eyeglasses store franchise Eye Wish Groeneveld is running an ad campaign about small print. It invites people to send in examples of ridiculously small print, e.g. in contracts and manuals, or on products. Part of the campaign is the release of a screen magnification tool.

Called the 'Websitevergroter' (web site magnifier), the small application does more than it suggests. It not only magnifies text and graphics on web sites, but also on your desktop. This makes it a good solution for people who have trouble reading a regular computer screen. Of course, Windows has its own accessibility options, including the option to use larger fonts, different resolutions, and a Microsoft magnifier. I considered including an example screenshot, but that doesn't seem to make sense. It would probably be resized when you see it anyway. So if you need this kind of software, you should try some alternatives. I do notice that this particular magnifier seems to do better than the few I checked, and it works well with pictures too. Which is another application of course, use it to zoom in on pictures on sites, if you don't have a Firefox add-on to do so. The program requires .NET to run.

Wondering if there are other freeware magnifying programs available, I came across magnifiers.org, a site dedicated to accessibility software, in particular to screen readers, magnifiers, and text-to-speech solutions. this site then led me to DesktopZoom. In addition to zooming areas around your mouse pointer, DesktopZoom also has an option to show a small display of your page in the corner and then show a magnified version of part of the screen. See this example. This is good if you need magnification almost all the time, but it makes me wonder: if you need magnification, will you be able to use the small display to navigate or is that impossible to read?

Another free solution is Virtual Magnifying Glass, which comes with a lot of options.

Websitevergroter is Dutch, but that does not have to bother you. It only has three settings: zoom factor, speed, and size (of the magnifying glass). To use it, click the icon and then drag it to the part of the screen you want magnified. As soon as let go of the left mouse button, the magnification ends. Which is annoying if you need to magnify part of the screen for a while. Like when you need to write down a phone number. Kind of hard to do with your 'bad' hand when you need your 'good' hand to hold the mouse. Virtual Magnifying Glass is better in this case. You click its tray icon and it starts magnifying where ever you move your mouse, until you click again.

Although I don't need any magnifying software right now, I figured it can't hurt to read up on it and be prepared. Plenty of older family members who may benefit from this at some point.

No no, I am not insane and I won't give it a try. But this guy is doing exactly that: he is going to live a month without Internet access.

I know, there are plenty of people who rarely spend time online. I even know at least one person whose only Internet access is when he looks over my shoulder while I search for something. But as someone who is used to being online a large part of the day, I find it hard to imagine a month without Internet access. Even if there was a way to stay in touch with my loved one without Internet access, I would still find it hard to be offline. Kind of strange, considering what I do online. Which is mostly reading news sites and playing an occasional game. Surely I could just watch the news on tv and play offline games? Surely ... Well, maybe I could. But I think I would feel left out, like I would miss something really important. The kind of things that don't make the 8 o'clock news.

A month without Internet access. At this point in life, after years of (almost) 24/7 online access, I don't see how I would do it. I get severe withdrawal symptoms after a day, two at the most. I think I will have driven myself and everyone around me nuts by the end of the first week, if I ever lose Internet access for that long.

In a time when two major European Airlines (Air France and Alitalia) happen to be affected by strikes and delays, the EU has announced an e-mail address for passengers affected by matters such as strikes and airline travel problems. EU passengers can mail passengersrights@ec.europa.eu to receive help.
[Source] (in Dutch, try this for news in English.)

An interesting idea, which begs the question: how long will it take to get a reply from this address? Is it operated 24/7 with a quick turnaround, or will the wait for an answer take just as long as the wait for the delayed flight?

(Of course one drawback to this service is the high cost of mobile internet on phones throughout Europe. € 25/mb not being an exception when one uses roaming mobile web access.)

[Edit: fixed the English link, thanks ]

Once upon a time I (legally, imagine that) acquired a copy of Microsoft Office 2000. This is the software I still use when I want to read or write Office documents such as Word or Excel files. So far, this used to work well, since even that old version could read the newer files created by such interestingly named applications as Word 2003. With the switch to Office 2007, this no longer is the case. The new “docx” files are not compatible with the older Word versions. So anytime I receive a file with a docx extension, I have trouble reading it. Not anymore though, since there is a fairly simple solution.

Microsoft must have understood that it would piss off a lot of customers if it would make it completely impossible for users of older Office versions to read the new documents. Enter the “Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats” that you can download from the Microsoft web site. Simply download and run the exe, which will then magically enable your old Office software to read the new file format.

I guess this means I'm good for another while, until Microsoft comes up with yet another new standard. In which case I hope they publish a new conversion tool/fix, since I am not looking forward to buying a new Office version. At that point I would probably switch to OpenOffice for real.