This is very, very good. Be safe on the road…
WordPress 2.9 – Carmen is out
The new features are automatic upgrade of plugins, automatic check for their compatibility, image editing integration (Crop, flip, rotate, etc…). Including videos on your posts are also much easier. All you need to do is to paste the video page URL of the supported web sites (youtube, dailymotion, etc…)
The posts are not going to disappear when you accidentally delete them. The new version brings a trash notion where the deleted posts now go there.
Here is a good video of the release!
Digital Frame or bust…
I’m writing this entry to push me to finish my neverending story about the digital frame project I started. I’m hoping that the entry will give me some sort of ignition after more than a year.
I had an old Dell Latitude c600 sitting at home and collecting dust. Like many other old hardware I have at home… So I decided to convert it to a digital frame that I can hang it somewhere.
Here are my goals:
- Have a low power, low cost digital frame.
- Ability to manage it wirelessly.
- Make it easy to use
- Have fun.
- Make an old hardware happy.
The very first step was to dissect the laptop and remove the guts. It turned out to be somewhat challenging, but with the right tools and time, things moved pretty good. I’m not going to go into details on how to dissect a c600, but here is a picture in the late stages of the dissection.
Next step was to remove all the unnecessary parts like battery, CD-ROM, and some mini pci cards like ethernet/modem combo. I kept the pcmcia slot for the wireless card, and while there, added some leftover RAM to it. After neatly placing them all together, here is how it looks with BIOS setup on. The image is tilted to get rid of the flash glare.
Now the software step. Of course my OS of choice is Debian/Linux. I installed bare minimum Debian with fluxbox as desktop manager. Al I needed to do was to find a low cpu/memory usage image viewer. At first I thought about not having a Graphic User interface, and use zgv from the console, but then I gave up since it was too much trouble. (Still I think it would be cool to have a console only picture frame, maybe on the next version)
Instead, I decided to use feh. I must say i’m extremely satisfied with feh and recommend to everybody 
The only issue I had was that the mouse pointer was showing in the middle of the frame which was not a good sight. I used unclutter to get rid of that. (I had to hack the program a bit to my taste)
I wrote some scripts and changed some config files for all this to start automatically. I will share the scripts later when the whole project is completed.
Now that the computer part is done, I need to take the measurements and head home depot or similar place to create some base for the frame and also buy a nice looking frame to place everything inside. So I guess there will be a second part of the blog entry.
Here is how it looks like as of now:
Blackberry email reading tips
- This is my favorite: If you press J and K on the email list or while reading the email, it moves between previous and next emails in the context. (just like in the vi )
- While reading and email, if you press N it goes to the next email, P to the previous email. And if you press same keys on the email list, it goes next day and previous day consecutively.
- Space key and Shift+Space key scrolls page by page the email list, or the email.
- T and B are shortcuts for Top and Bottom, no more scrolling like crazy to go to the end of an email
- R is to Reply, L is to Reply All.
- U is to go to the oldest unread messages.
I hope this is useful
The new 80′s
Enough with eighties revival! The only thing good about eighties was the music. The whole eighties fashion was horribly wrong and was a mistake. Please let’s learn from our mistakes.
The shoes with weird color combinations were wrong. Same thing for the big sunglasses! Shirts with big metallic buttons all over and wide shoulders for women, oh my god please stooppp!
We went shopping with Ebru last weekend and all the brands are racing to bring back the eighties. It makes me wonder if they hit the innovation wall. Even the fake shiny leather curvy adidas bags were back. I wanted throw up in them. 
All the teenagers who were either a sperm or two-three years old when this horrible fashion was “rocking” the world are now going crazy shopping in urban outfitters for fake eighties stuff.
I’m ok with bringing back the 8 bit music, heavy metal, pixel art, synth music, etc.. But please please not the fashion!
Fun with Google Translate
I was playing with google translate, I wanted to get some turkish proverbs and translate them to english, then translate them back to turkish and back to english and so forth… Here are some of the results:
Bilmemek ayip degil, sormamak ayip.
Not to know not shame, shame not to ask.
Değil, sormak ayıp ayıp değil değil bilmek.
Not, not shame shame not know to ask.
Değil, değil ayıp ayıp istemeyi bilmiyor.
Not, not shame shame not know to ask.
Sinek küçüktür, ama mide bulandırır.
Sinek is small, but it is sick.
Sinek küçüktür ama hasta.
Sinekli is small, but sick.
Sinekli, küçük ama hasta.
Sinekli small but sick.
Sinekli küçük ama hasta.
Sürüden ayrılan koyunu kurt kapar.
Separated from the herd the sheep off the wolves.
Bir kurt kapatma koyun sürünün ayrılır.
A wolf’s flocks are separated off.
Bir kurt’s hayvanlarını kapalı ayrılır.
A wolf’s animals are separated off.
Bir kurt’s hayvanların kapalı ayrılır.
Misafir umduğunu değil, bulduğunu yer.
Guests are not expected, found place.
Konuklar bekleniyor değilseniz, yer buldu.
If you are not guests are expected, was found.
Eğer ziyaretçi bekleniyor değilseniz bulundu.
If the visitor is expected if you are not found.
Eğer bulunamıyorsa Eğer ziyaretçi bekleniyor.
If you can not be found if visitors are expected.
Eğer ziyaretçi bekleniyor Eğer bulunamadı.
If visitors are expected, if not found.
Ziyaretçiler bekleniyor, eğer bulunamadı.
Visitors are expected, if not found.
Eğer bulunamadı Ziyaretçi, bekleniyor.
(OK I’m tired here! this is not going anywhere.)
So the morale of the story is: Don’t trust the translations.
Zipir
Meow
nmap 5 released!
nmap version 5 is released today. According to insecure.org it’s the most important release since 1997.
And here is the download link.
I want to mention one more time how much I appreciate all work done on this exceptional product.
Lightweight bomb scare at the Turkish Airlines office. (Only in Turkey?)
I went to the Turkish Airlines (THY) ticket office in Istanbul today to take care of some problems. This post is not about THY, it’s just about a stupid/funny story that happened right in front of the ticketing office.
Me and my father just before getting in the office, we saw an old fashioned alarm clock sitting on the left side of the main entrance, right by the windows. Now, when imagining the alarm clock, please think a moment: visualize the stereotypical old alarm clock… Yes… That one… The one that you see in most of the cartoons…
We both thought about the same story, a movie cliché: Ticking bomb! First we laughed at each other. Then we both agreed that THY office is a target as well, and decided to tell the “authorities” in the office. There was a slight panic in the air. Some customers left, the others suggested to call the cops. The security guy went out to poke the clock…
At the end, it turned out that the alarm clock belonged to the resident glue sniffer homeless guy (tinerci) of the park next door… Only in Turkey…
Funny
Funny
