Cristiano on Tech/Life

Reviewing the Creative Gigaworks T20 Series II Speakers

I think it’s about time for me to review some of the hardware I bought recently. First up is the new set of speakers that I got, the Creative Gigaworks T20 Series II. My main workstation where I wanted to use them is a Mac Mini which doesn’t have any 5.1 output except for a digital [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Reviewing the Creative Gigaworks T20 Series II Speakers

Yahoo Pipe for IMDB Top 250

I just made a little Yahoo Pipe that extracts all the info from the IMDB Top 250 list. There were already a few of thee out there but none of them just took all, and just all, the info and outputted it as a pipe. So here it is, but keep in mind that it’s mostly [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Yahoo Pipe for IMDB Top 250

New Years Resolutions 2010

So now it’s time for this year’s resolutions. I hope these ones are a bit more realistic than last year’s ones. Get healthier – I used to go running, and I used to weigh about 20KG less than I do at the moment. To be honest, I don’t care about my weight, but I do care [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - New Years Resolutions 2010

Looking back at 2009 resolutions

It’s the time of the year again for New Year’s resolutions and so I start by looking back at the resolutions from the last year and how I did. Project 365 & 52 Themes – I completely failed on this. I came to about 100 in the Project 365 but gave up on the 52 themes [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Looking back at 2009 resolutions

My Bookmarks For December 6th – December 17th

Creating Bootable Vista / Windows 7 USB Flash Drive – Simplest tutorial I found so far for making a bootable Windows 7 USB installer. No 3rd party software required, and very easy to follow. REYNHOLM INDUSTRIES : Welcome – Awesome IT Crowd related website, not made by the IT Crowd people! A Symfony 1.3 Gem: Open Files [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - My Bookmarks For December 6th – December 17th

The MacBook Mini Project

When I replaced my MacBook with a Mac Mini setup I was always planning to invest some time into a netbook. I recently ordered a (RED) Dell Mini 10v with the plan to turn it into a hackintosh. After a few days (*cough* weeks) of tinkering I now have a machine I’m happy with. In short: [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - The MacBook Mini Project

Cool Javascript Graphs

I’ve been looking at some javascript graphing libraries recently and noticed that this is still an area that’s in heavy development. The development of CSS3, SVG, and other new HTML technologies have given rise to a new breed of libraries. Here are some of the interesting ones I bumped into. I haven’t tested any of [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Cool Javascript Graphs

Easiest way to use a Three 3G Dongle on a Mac

I have a Three 3G Dongle that I occasionally use when on the road. Now that I have a NetBook with Mac OS X I plan to use it even more. The problem with this Three 3G dongle (Huawei E156G) is the software that comes with it. It’s bloated, replicates standard Mac OS X behaviour, [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Easiest way to use a Three 3G Dongle on a Mac

AppDate #14: TwoUp

In the last few weeks I’ve slowly fallen in love with this little application called TwoUp. I recently got a new 24″ monitor and realized that I can easily run multiple windows side-by-side. The problem is trying to make 2 windows not overlap but take up as much space as possible: it’s impossible by hand! In [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - AppDate #14: TwoUp

Panic’s lost 1982 artwork. Found

What if Panic’s software wasn’t made for the Mac, but for the Atari? Panic’s lost 1982 artwork. Found. « Panic Blog. Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Panic’s lost 1982 artwork. Found

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Panic’s lost 1982 artwork. Found

My Bookmarks For November 18th – December 4th

10.5: How to reset Leopard back to the Setup Assistant – I've been reinstalling some laptops recently that are going to family. I wanted to put some apps on it already but couldn't take the "fresh OS X install"-feeling away from them so this little scripts puts a system back to basics while leaving the [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - My Bookmarks For November 18th – December 4th

Dell Mini 10/Linux – 2 Days of pain

So yesterday my new laptop arrived. I decided to get a little Dell Mini 10 netbook as a companion to my new Mac Mini workstation. At the moment I’m at the point of selling it again though. I found a good deal on eBay for a Dell Mini 10 with integrated wireless-n, bluetooth, 3G/HSDPA, TV-tuner, HD [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Dell Mini 10/Linux – 2 Days of pain

Minemalistic TV Show Posters

Minemalistic TV Show posters Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Minemalistic TV Show Posters

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Minemalistic TV Show Posters

Prodigy Vs Enya – Smack My Bitch Up

It still amazes me that somehow this combination works! Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Prodigy Vs Enya – Smack My Bitch Up

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Prodigy Vs Enya – Smack My Bitch Up

Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel

We saw “Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel” this weekend at Ian’s place and I seriously thought it was hilarious. Go and have a look at the trailer and definitely watch it on DVD if you can. Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel

My Bookmarks For October 7th – November 9th

Kill or cure? – What does the Daily mail thinks causes or prevents cancer? Cartographer.js – thematic mapping for Google Maps – Working with Google maps directly can be a bitch (trust me, I tried) so I’m happy to see someone abstracted some cool functions out 10 Useful WordPress Coding Techniques « Smashing Magazine – Thinking [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - My Bookmarks For October 7th – November 9th

BarCampLondon7 was awesome

So we did it. We ran another BarCampLondon. It was awesome and it would have been impossible without all the organisers, volunteers, IBM people, catering, and most of all the attendees. It’s sad it’s over already but at least we still have the photos. Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - BarCampLondon7 was awesome

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - BarCampLondon7 was awesome

“Do You Wanna Date My Avatar?” Live Performance

“Do You Wanna Date My Avatar?” Live performance I just love these guys Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - “Do You Wanna Date My Avatar?” Live Performance

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - “Do You Wanna Date My Avatar?” Live Performance

The New Architecture

The New Architecture by Adam Wojtalik. In 2008 the Architecture faculty of my university (Delft University of Technology) burned down completely. Since then people have been proposing new buildings to take its place. I must say this design is quite impressive and rather awesome. Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - The New Architecture

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - The New Architecture

First Steps Into Freelancing

First Steps Into Freelancing « Dominic “The Hodge” Hodgson. Great article by Dom on what to do when you start freelancing. I officially started fully freelancing today and I’m glad I started it on my own terms. I mostly agree with Dom: get out there and network or you’ll never get any clients. Originally posted on Cristiano [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - First Steps Into Freelancing

Moo MiniCards just got some HUGE updates!

MiniCards just got some HUGE updates! New box, and now you can upload full images for the back side too! Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Moo MiniCards just got some HUGE updates!

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Moo MiniCards just got some HUGE updates!

Taiwan ‘Hack Girls’

Taiwan ‘Hack Girls’ [Edit: I had to replace the video with an older one because the original one has been pulled. This one doesn't have lap dancers but it sets the scene quite right] Bad Yahoo! Very bad! Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Taiwan ‘Hack Girls’

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Taiwan ‘Hack Girls’

New blog theme!

I’ve been working for a while now on a redesign of my own sites, which include my main site and my blog. Today I’m proud to release the first step of this new design namely this new fancy blog design. It is built from scratch and it’s interesting to have built a Wordpress theme like [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - New blog theme!

Ready to play in Black Dynamite

Ready to play in Black Dynamite Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Ready to play in Black Dynamite

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Ready to play in Black Dynamite

GoodReader – Best PDF reader for iPhone

Ever since I got my iPhone I had been wanting to get a really good PDF reader. Quickly after the launch of the AppStore there were quite a few of them, but none of them seemed to be able to handle a 750 page tech manual that well. For a while though there has been [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - GoodReader – Best PDF reader for iPhone

My Bookmarks For August 23rd – September 21st

SpotifiTunes – Get your whole iTunes library in Spotify! Just import the XML and boom, it's there. Install multiple versions of IE on your PC | TredoSoft – Wow, a bit of software that will install IE3 – IE6 on a Windows Install. Using this now since MS buggered up their VPC installs Typographic Design Patterns and [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - My Bookmarks For August 23rd – September 21st

Video of the Day: Quarter Pounder with Cheese!

We went to see Inglourious Basterds (well worth seeing!) and then we ran into this little Tarantino tribute. Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Video of the Day: Quarter Pounder with Cheese!

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Video of the Day: Quarter Pounder with Cheese!

Review: Starbucks VIA Ready Brew

A few weeks back I attended the London Bloggers meetup, sponsored by Starbucks coffee. They were there to promote their new instant coffee with the “great marketing name” of “VIA Ready Brew“…. Not sure who came up with that one. So, Starbucks Instant Coffee, sounds like a bad idea from the start right? That’s at least [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Review: Starbucks VIA Ready Brew

Preview of James Cameron’s Avatar

We got to see the 15 minute preview of Avatar, the new James Cameron movie (Director of Titanic, Alien, and many more classics). The movie has been in the making for over 10 years now and there has been a lot of hype surrounding the buildup to it’s premiere on the 18th of December. The [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Preview of James Cameron’s Avatar

My Bookmarks For August 10th – August 20th

Always Innovating: Introducing the Touch Book – I would almost get this as my NetBook, if it wasn't that "new". Also can't figure out the import tax I'd have to pay if I got one convert .vhd (virtualpc) file to .vdi (virtualbox) format – Handy little tutorial for converting a VirtualPC hard disk image to a [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - My Bookmarks For August 10th – August 20th

What do geeks do in the weekend? Swede!

What did I do last weekend, well, something typicaly geeky and crazy, and something I’m probably going to regret…. Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - What do geeks do in the weekend? Swede!

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - What do geeks do in the weekend? Swede!

Twitter and The Case Against oAuth

So I’m a big supporter of OpenID and oAuth, but sometimes I have to agree with big companies like Google in the fact that these technologies are really confusing to end users. The problem is that people don’t understand these technologies and while they shouldn’t it does allow for some people to take advantage of [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Twitter and The Case Against oAuth

Gadget Review: Flip Ultra

We got to make a new Swede this weekend (more on that later), but instead of using a real camera we used a Flip Ultra (provided to us by Cisco). I know a lot of people have been going crazy about this little camera, but I never understood it until this weekend. To give you a [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Gadget Review: Flip Ultra

Board Game Madness: Carcassonne – The City

Last week I managed to get my hands on a really cheap version of Carcassonne: The City (Amazon, Wikipedia). This game comes in a nice wooden box and normally costs about £30+ in the shops. The game is a not an expansion of the Carcassonne game, but instead the first spin-off from the main game [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Board Game Madness: Carcassonne – The City

My First Web App: Plain or Framework?

I was talking to the Hodge today about web development and how I think nobody in his right mind should ever make a web app that’s not based on some kind of rapid development framework. We agreed on this, but it made me think: what if you’re 100% new to web development? Should you try [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - My First Web App: Plain or Framework?

Appdate #13: Choosy

Time for a new installment of my ever so irregular Appdate segment. Today I want to introduce you to Choosy, a little app created by the friendly London based developer George Brocklehurst As you can see, Choosy is a handy little tool for us that have more than one main browser, are web developers, have site [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Appdate #13: Choosy

My Bookmarks For August 5th – August 10th

Viral Coefficient Calculation – Needed this for work. Very clear description. I would have liked if his future prediction formula also took the second derivative of the growth (the 1st derivative of the virality) Integrated Bus Route Maps from WhatBus.com! – Handy little app that shows all the bus routes in London overlayed on a google [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - My Bookmarks For August 5th – August 10th

My Bookmarks For July 25th – August 4th

HTML5 Canvas and Audio Experiment – Awesome Twitter visualization that only uses Javascript and HTML5 Quirkybags – Handbag liner. Quite handy. A bit more expensive than I was looking for as my Crumpler bag that I want to use it for. Helveticons – Great bunch of royalty free icons based on the Helvetica fonttype Project Lombok – Cool [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - My Bookmarks For July 25th – August 4th

My Bookmarks For July 16th – July 23rd

ie7.js & ie8.js – I need to look into these libraries to make my next project work 100% in both IE7 and IE6 Get MySQLdb Running on Mac Leopard « Bethink – This is the only online tutorial that I managed to be able to setup up MySQLdb successfully with. CitySounds.fm – The music of cities [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - My Bookmarks For July 16th – July 23rd

Data Visualisation @ News Innovation London

I gave a little talk at News Innovation here in London 2 weeks back, at which I quickly ran through a long list of data visualisations to show how it can help people understand things easier. I promised to put the list on my blog and forgot till now. Here they are. Most of them come [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Data Visualisation @ News Innovation London

My Bookmarks For July 13th – July 15th

guardian-twitterfall – Google Code – Handy little tool for tracking Tweets The Amazing World of Version Numbers | Technologizer – Some fun anecdotes regarding version numbers. 500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error O2 Digital News Centre: Turning on Twitter Texts – O2 is now going to support free direct-to-mobile texts for your Twitter mentions and direct [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - My Bookmarks For July 13th – July 15th

Music Hack Day 2009

So we were at the first London Music Hack Day this weekend, held at the beautiful Guardian offices where we held BarcampLondon6 a few months back. I’ve been to a few hack days before, mostly organised by Yahoo and the BBC, and sice the last one I promised myself to always at least prepare some [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Music Hack Day 2009

My Bookmarks For June 25th – July 11th

Sir Bonar on Intercept Modernisation at Open Tech 09 – The brilliant Sir Bonar Neville Kingdom gives a great speach at #opentech SaveIE6: Help us save the best browser around – IE6 needs our help Download details: IE App Compat VHD – Handy list of Windows VirtualPC images with various browser (IE6, IE7, IE8) that work fine [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - My Bookmarks For June 25th – July 11th

My Bookmarks For June 18th – June 25th

Lifestream Backup – Handy tool that I need to look into What do you talk about at BarCamp? – Great talk on what makes an awesome Barcamp talk. I think most Barcamp veterans agree. The Usability of Passwords – Wow, I am so going to change my passwords to some more memorable passphrases now. Meet the gadget hackers [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - My Bookmarks For June 18th – June 25th

My Bookmarks For June 13th – June 17th

Thoughts on Opera Unite | FactoryCity – Interesting view from Chris Messina on Opera Unite and why it doesn't deliver. ReMate – Handy little bundle for TextMate that makes it just that bit more usable when working on a SSHFS system What is a browser? – Interesting how everyone seems to think Google is a browser WhatTheFont! « [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - My Bookmarks For June 13th – June 17th

How to install Bugzilla on Shared Hosting (Site5)

I’ve been using Site5 for years now and I love them: they’re cheap, reliable and have great service. But using a shared hosting service can sometimes be a pain. Yesterday I wanted to install Bugzilla on Site5 and couldn’t initially figure it out. The wiki and forums were not of much help and most of the [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - How to install Bugzilla on Shared Hosting (Site5)

My Bookmarks For May 28th – June 10th

Tube Time travel – What if the tube map can be defined by travel distance to the other stations? LDDC Completion Booklet – Surrey Docks – Interesting booklet on the development of our living area: Surrey Docks Watercoolr – Gossip for web applications – Pubsub via Webhooks. Sounds really cool and it probably is. is 4a.m. the new [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - My Bookmarks For May 28th – June 10th

My Bookmarks For May 14th – May 18th

ShouldIBackupMy.com | The Guardian Open Platform | guardian.co.uk – My first guest post on The Guardian Open Platform blog! Wohoo! resty – A better restclient for the command line than Curl – Definitive List of The 99 Things You Should Have Already Experienced On The Internet Unless You’re a Loser or Old or Something – Awesome [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - My Bookmarks For May 14th – May 18th

My Bookmarks For May 11th – May 14th

Interview: Yahoo’s David Filo insists he’s open to ideas | Technology | The Guardian – Another review of Yahoo and the Open Hack day, includes a bit on ShouldIBackupMy.com "Strangely enough, the site that ranked the chances of your Yahoo-hosted service closing down didn't make the prizes." ShouldIBacupMy.com on the Tech Weekly podcast – Starts at [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - My Bookmarks For May 11th – May 14th

Should I Backup My… – The Video

I knew that someone must have made a video of my presentation on ShouldIBackupMy.com, and this is the first one I found. It only shows a little bit, but I think it’s the best part probably. For those who don’t get the joke regarding GeoCities: read and shiver. Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Should I Backup [...]

Originally posted on Cristiano on Tech/Life - Should I Backup My… – The Video