If you are like me and enjoy Peggle you must definitely check out this awesome 1.7 million shot replay.

The guy that made that beautiful Jules Verne keyboard modification just brought us another mod but this time of a DELL 1907FP LCD screen in the same retro style.

If you are a paranoid geek that likes to triple DES your shopping list (aren’t we all?) this is the firefox extension that you’ll like to install. FireGPG helps you encrypt and sign the text you write in your browser (even extends gmail to include some buttons like crypt and sign) using external tools like gnupg under GNU/Linux and MacOSX and gpg4win under Windows. One thing I don’t like about it is that I’ve noticed a CMD.exe windows launched when you execute the operations (and even more disturbingly it got launched in other occasions on almost random clicks). This made me panic whether I’ve caught some ad-ware but soon enough it was obvious it was the extension that was causing it.

Several months ago I was thinking along how cool it would be if I could encrypt my gmail email but what I’ve wanted is a mashup approach where you encrypt the message using a web service/json/ajax aproach. Of course, this means less security as data needs to be sent over the wire but consider that using ssl and having a virus/spyware/keylogger free server diminishes the risk level. It also has the benefits of not having to install a fat client, ability to use it all over the world and not having the annoying CMD.EXE window popping up.

Does anyone know of a site that allows such a service (key management and publishing included)?

The videos of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates taken during the D5 conference were just posted on line. Simply beautiful. I think Steve had a point as far as the “Post PC device” scenarios and WPF, Silverlight, JavaFX and Apollo are just clear clues that confirm that trend where we’ll see much innovation as far as innovative scenarios to interact with the future PC.

Microsoft has just announced their Surface computer. What has started as an interesting idea back in 2001 as an idea just got materialized as a 30″ desk with some wicked UI and the full power of Windows Vista behind it. While we’ve seen prototypes of such an interface on TED demoed by Jeff Han what I liked about the presentation of Surface is the level of interaction with physical objects like mp3 players, digital cameras, phones and credit cards. I do feel however that while having an interactive desk is interesting, with prices ranging from $5,000 to $10,000 we’ll wait a little bit until we see great acceptance. I think I find the monitor or the TV as a better interaction device (primarily because they are vertical). We should be expecting the first products in Winter 2007.

As a programmer I can’t wait to see the API’s that will be used, WPF might just find a great use in these devices.

Should we expect patent wars on these multi-touch interfaces? How will Apple react? How will perceptive pixel react? This might well become the real user interface revolution people have been waiting since the whole WIMP concept invented way back in ’84 by Xerox.

Congratulations to Karolina for entering the finals of the Eurovision Song contest 2007! If you like our song please vote for it!
On a side note I also liked the Bulgarian song (sounds a bit Macedonian too . The Serbian song was interesting but I think the choreography sucked a little bit (I can motivate this but I’d have to censor myself) and the Turkey’s song could have been as the refrain was really ruining it. I haven’t seen all the songs yet but all participants and a rerun of the semifinal can be seen on www.eurovision.tv. Keep your fingers crossed for Karolinche and if you like it send your SMS!
Here’s the youtube version or you can get the better quality movie here.

Couple of years ago I tried to write something in prolog. I thought about doing the classical syllogism about Socrates (the one about mortality) but in a sudden illumination I wanted to recreate a classical sketch from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975).

So the requirements to “get” the jokes are that you are a geek, and that you love the Pythons (which is a syllogism by itself). Knowing some Prolog doesn’t hurt.

witch(X)  :- burns(X) , female(X).
burns(X)  :- wooden(X).
wooden(X) :- floats(X).
floats(X) :- sameweight(duck, X).

female(girl).
sameweight(duck,girl).

A nice PDF poster with all gazillion WS standards. They can even send it to you for the price of shipping. More info here, courtesy of innoQ.