Carbonized Blog

Ebook Pricing

Carbonize — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:00:48 +0000

Thanks to a couple I am friends with I now have a Sony PRS-600 ebook reader. Brilliant as my book shelves are full. Anyway I thought I would buy some books to go on it from some of my favourite authors. My first port of call was Waterstones where I did a quick search for Neal Asher. For the hardback copy of his book Orbus they are charging £16.19 (apparently saving me £1.80). For the ebook version which requires no manufacturing, incurs no transportation costs and they only need to keep a single copy of on the server they want £14.39 and WHSmith’s want £12.59 for the ebook version. How the hell can they justify this? Another of Neal Asher’s book, Brass Man, goes for £7.99 for the paperback and they want £6.39 for the ebook version but apparently it’s only that price because it’s in the sale The same ebook on WHSmith’s is £5.59.

More Addictive Than Tetris?

Carbonize — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 05:51:25 +0000

I read an article in the Guardian’s technology section about a game for the iPhone called Drop7. Now I don’t own an iPhone (nor do I want to) but the reporter said it is one of the most addictive games he has played since Tetris. I managed to find the original version that the Drop7 game is based upon and it is addictive.

It’s a little hard to explain. Basically you have to drop balls from the top of the screen to the bottom to make rows and columns. The idea is to drop that ball into a row or on to a column so that you get a straight line (not diagonal) that is made from the number of balls on at least one of the balls in that row/column. So say you have three balls side by side with the number 3, 7 and 4. If you were to then drop another ball next to them it would make it four balls in a row which would make the 4 ball disappear and get you points. If the ball you dropped was also a four then both 4 balls would disappear. Occasionally you also get rocks that drop with no number but these are removed by cracking them open. You achieve this by making them part of a row of balls that is included in the number of balls to make a ball disappear.

Like I said hard to explain but damn easy to play and even easier to understand once you are playing.

http://chainfactor.com/

Spyware Block Lists

Carbonize — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:32:29 +0000

For years now I have used both SpywareBlaster and SpyBot to immunise my web browsers against hosts file. They also help to stop tracking cookies which are used to log what type of websites you visited.

Anyway I was updating them both today and I got to thinking, “How often do they check that the sites in their block lists are still active?” At present SpyBot is saying it has immunised me against 130712 sites and SpywareBlaster says 13138 sites. So I decided to test a random selection of 20 sites they have blocked. Out of the 20 all the domains had now expired and pointed to nothing (resulting in a oops message in the browser) or they were now a domain landing page. That’s one of these stupid pages you sometimes end up on when you mistype a web address which has a list of links loosely based upon the domain name.

I know both of these programs are free but would it be to hard for them to write a program that checks their list every so often to remove dead domains? The reason I say this is because Internet Explorers block list is stored in the registry and this can slow down your computers boot up time. Also the more sites are blocked the slower your web browser may become. SO come on programmers. Just write a program that runs through your list once a month and see if they are still active or not.

Another Day, Another Internet Explorer Exploit

Carbonize — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 08:49:12 +0000

When Internet Explorer 8 came out Microsoft said they had seriously improved security and that it was now one of the safest web browsers to use. Apparently they were wrong. According to the Guardian newspaper here in the UK an exploit in Internet Explorer was used in the recent attack on Google’s systems in China.

source

So why keep using it? There are plenty of excellent alternatives these days. Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Flock and you could even use Apple’s Safari although it uses a stupid amount of memory on Windows.

Install Several Programs With One Installer

Carbonize — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:58:20 +0000

Some of the software Ninite offers

Have you just installed/reinstalled Xp, Vista or Windows 7? Need to install programs but don’t want to sit there manually installing them? Then try Ninite Easy PC Setup. Ninite makes installing multiple applications simple. You just go to their site, select the applications you want to install and then click Get Installer at the bottom. It will then download a small program which you will need to run as administrator so it can install the programs. The installer then downloads the install packages for your chosen programs and silently installs them. You can even suggest other programs for them to add to their list. They promise they only install the chosen program and not any of the rubbish a lot of the program installers try to add such as toolbars.

“We install apps with default settings and say “no” to browser toolbars and other junk.”

So basically you
1 – Go to the Ninite Easy PC Setup site.
2 – Select the programs you want to install.
3 – Download their installer.
4 – Run the installr as administrator.
5 – Go do something less boring whilst their installer does all the work for you.

Just to add you will need cookies enabled to be able to download the instaler.

Facebook Wins $711 Million From Spammer

Carbonize — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:29:29 +0000

Facebook has won a court case against a spammer who was abusing their site to send spam to Facebook users. The spammer known as Spamford, real name Sanford Wallace, is also facing prosecution for criminal contempt of court which could result in prison time. Wallace has also previously been prosecuted by MySpace for abusing their site to send porn and MySpace was awarded $230 million.

[source]

Chrome OS now in beta

Carbonize — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:56:03 +0000

Fancy trying the new OS that Google is working on? Well you’re out of luck but in the meantime you can try the Chrome OS that for some bizarre reason Suse has made and released on a Google hosted site ~~http://sites.google.com/site/chromeoslinux/~~ (Google has taken the site down). What’s really funny is the amount of people that have been Tweeting about how either this is Google’s new OS or the rest that are calling it a fake. It’s not a fake as it really is an OS called Chrome OS it’s just people have been fooled by the sites design and hosting in to believing it is Google’s OS.

From the site:

2009-10-21: New Chrome OS 0.4.223 beta is available now!

Chrome OS is a brand new free operating system built around the revolutionary Google Chrome browser.

The project aim is to provide a lightweight Linux distribution for the best web browsing experience.

Featured software in Chrome OS:

GNOME 2.24 desktop environment
Google Chrome 4.0.223 web browser
Google Picasa 2.7 photo manager New!
OpenOffice.org 3.0 office suite
GIMP 2.6 image editor
Flash Player 10.0 plugin
and much more!

System requirements of Chrome OS:

Processor: Intel Pentium, Xeon or newer; AMD Duron, Athlon, Sempron, Opteron or newer
RAM: min. 256 MB
Hard disk: min. 1 GB
Graphics card: supports most modern graphics cards

Why they would try to make people believe this was Googles forthcoming OS I don’t know.

Biggest Burger in Britain

Carbonize — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:18:33 +0000

Kiss your arteries goodbye!

The biggest burger in Britain has gone on sale today at The Jolly Fryer takeaway in Filton, Bristol.

The Super Scooby is loaded with four 1/4lb beef burgers, eight rashers of bacon, eight slices of cheese, 12 onion rings, heaps of salad and three sauces. At 2,645 calories, it exceeds the daily recommended limit for men by 145 calories.

The burger stands at six inches tall, has a circumference of 13 inches, and weighs in at 1.5kg – the same as a family-sized roast chicken. It also comes with an extra side portion of chips.

The Jolly Fryer takeaway in Filton, Bristol, are offering customers the meal for £10 – and provide a free can of diet coke for anyone who can finish it in one sitting.

Albums A Dying Art Form?

Carbonize — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:33:00 +0000

I just read an article on MP3 and it got me thinking, When was the last time I sat down and actually listened to an album from start to finish? Ask yourself when was the last time you sat down and listened to an album in it’s entirety? Due to how easy it is now to get hold of a single track via things like iTunes and Amazon few people even buy albums, they just buy whatever single caught their attention on the radio. The other problem here is people don’t take time out these days neither. Suggest to a person that they just sit down and listen to music for an hour and they’ll tell you they don’t have the time and yet they are happy to sit in front of the TV watching mind numbing nothingness for hour after hour. Years ago I would occasionally just put an album on, turn the volume up and lose myself in the music.

So I say either dig out your favourite album, or get hold of an album by your favourite artist, put it on, turn the lights down, get comfy and listen to it from start to finish. You might be surprised by some of the tracks that your favourite artist recorded but didn’t release due to them not being commercial enough.

Oh and don’t forget to use headphones if you don’t live alone or have really thin walls

Online Image Editor

Carbonize — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:35:29 +0000

Away from home or just don’t fancy installing a fullyfledged image editor? Then have a look at Pixlr. Pixlr is an online image editor written in Flash that has all the features most people need such as red eye removal, cropping, rotation etc. It also has filters for doing such things as turning images into old style photographs, adding noise, Kaleidoscope and much more. Give it a whirl. It can also be used to create images from scratch as well as saving as your choice of jpg, png, bmp and their own format pxd which lets you go back and adjust any layers etc you may have had.