Marc O’Morain

DEAR SIR/ MADAM

FIRST, I MUST SOLICIT YOUR STRICTEST CONFIDENCE IN THIS TRANSACTION AND I PRAY THAT MY CONTACTING YOU WILL BE GIVEN GENIUNE APPROVAL I WISH TO USE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO INTRODUCE MYSELF TO YOU.I AM FRANK USMAN FROM REPUBLIC OF SUDAN IN AFRICA. I WRITES TO INFORM YOU MY DESIRE TO INVEST AND TO BUY A LIVING HOUSE IN YOUR COUNTRY. I AM THE FIRST SON OF MR USMAN BELLO,WHO WAS THE THE CHIEF IN THE RICH DIAMOND MINING VILLAGE IN SOUTH DARFUR IN SUDAN. MY FATHER WAS ATTACKED AND SHOT BY THE REBELS ON HIS WAY TO HIS HOUSE, ALONG WITH MY SISTER.MY SISTER DIED ON THE SPOT WHILE U.N.PEACE KEEPING FORCE RESCUED MY FATHER,HE WAS TAKEN TO HOSPITAL FOR MEDICAL ATTENTION WHICH HE LATER DIED. IT WAS AT THIS THAT THE CHIEF UN PEACE ENVOY A FRIEND TO MY FATHER[ Mr JOHN PRONK ]THEN ARRENGED AN ARMY PLANE TO CONVEY ME AND MY MOTHER MRS ALICIA USMAN TO GHANA-ACCRA.

ABOUT TEN DAYS NOW BEFORE HE DIED HE REAVEALED TO ME ABOUT THE BOX CONTAINING TWELVE MILLION U S DOLLARS . WHICH HE DEPOSITED WITH A SECURITY COMPANY IN GHANA FOR SAFE KEEPING. MY FATHER DID NOT DISCLOSE THE CONTENT OF THE BOXES TO THE SECURITY COMPANY,HE DEPOSITED IT AS ART WORKS FOR EXPORT.TO AVOID THE OFFICIALS FROM RAISING EYE BROWS. FOR YOUR FORIEGN ASSISTANCE MYSELF AND MY MOTHER MRS ALICIA USMAN HAVE AGREED TO OFFER YOU TWENTY PERCENT OF THE TOTAL AMOUNT IF THE CONSIGNMENT CAN BE DEPOSITED IN YOUR NAME AND CUSTODY ABROAD.WE HAVE ALL THE VITAL DOCUMENTS COVERING THE DEPOSIT AND THE OWNERSHIP WHICH I CAN SEND TO YOU THROUGH FAX ON REQUEST I HAVE NEVER DISCLOSED THIS TO ANY PERSON APART FROM YOU,SO YOU HAVE TO KEEP THIS VERY VERY CONFIDENTIAL. SEND ME YOUR PRIVATE PHONE AND FAX FOR MORE INFORMATIONS.

BEST REGARDS,

FRANK USMAN.
233 277 164 217.

When I put a CD into my PC, it Windows Media Player automatically gets the album info from the internet, and rips the songs onto a central music share on a different box on my network. It names the songs exaclty as I like them - “My Music\Artists\Album\Artist - Album - ## - Track Name”. It refuses to index the music on the network share, enven though I have ticked the box entitled “Even include music from networks or removable storage when indexing”.

So I have to use Winamp to view my music collection. Winamp and Windows Media Player are both horrible applications to use - the user interfaces are not written in the native GUI toolkit. Windows Media Player even changes shape depending on where the mouse is on the application. That is wy I heart Totem, Sound juicer and Rhythmbox. After I have finished college I will try to migrate my mother from Windows to Gnome. She currently uses OpenOffce.org without realising that it isn’t Microsoft Office. I think she will notice if I just suddenly replace her desktop with Gnome and .

Edit:
I spoke too soon. Winamp stores it’s media database information in “C:\Program Files”, instead of in “C:\Documents and Setting\$USER\Application Data”. When will Windows developers learn to write software that doesn’t require administrator priviledges to run?

A Video of some Japenese people watching the ring.

The world is so full of wonder today.

The Office (American Version)

Oh it’s so bad.

This is a follow up to my recent discovery. The picture above is in fact the location of De Moines, the state capital of Iowa, and not a circuit schematic.

Almost a year ago the world changed, ever so slightly.

You too can make a furry iBook:

Have you ever wondered how many people have died fighting for Jerusalem?

Here are my late night musings on making Wikipedia good:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-March/038271.html
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-March/038304.html

The following code:
int* freeBlockCounter = (int*)dwInstance;

Gives the following warning:

d:\fyp\Editor\Editor\SoundSystem.cpp(64) : warning C4312: ‘type cast’ : conversion from ‘DWORD’ to ‘int *’ of greater size

But yes, Visual Studio, I know what I am doing, that why I did an explicit cast. So shut up.

This lab is full of ICT people. There is a girl here with a laptop running Fedora, and a boy is trying to get her network to work.

Boy: It looks like you don”t have drivers installed for your network card
Girl: Really? But I have Firefox installed…

This person is two months away from a degree in computing.

Edit:
She has spent the last hour trying to figure out what a classpath is.

I got up this morning, had a bowl of Shreddies, and checked the post. Trinity had sent out the form for graduation. I will be graduating on November 17th, 2005. I filled out the form, got the bus into town and handed it in. It took less than an hour. Why people left it until October last year I will never know.

My website now has a random quote at the top. That’s what Saturdays are for.

I have 38 ring-pulls and labels from cans and bottles of Coke. Each one entitles me to a free DRM-riddled music download from mycokemusic.com. I have been trying to download music for some time now.

1. First of all I tried to download the songs using Firefox. I was able to register, enter one free code, and to view the site, but as soon as I got near any music, the site started to use ActiveX controls, and I failed to get any music.
2. I tried using Internet Explorer 6. I did not have flash installed, so I was redirected to the Macromedia website. I clicked the install flash button, and nothing happened. It seems that you actually cannot install flash as a basic user in Windows, you need administrator privileges. It doesn’t tell you this, however - nothing happens. Failure 2.
3. I then had to log out and log back in as administrator to install flash. This was OK. I logged back in as a user and went back to the coke website. I logged in and chose a song to download with my one free credit. You cannot download songs however, without the coke music download software. So I tried to install it. Usually installing software requires me to download, right click on the installantion package and click ‘install as’, and then type the administrator password and install the software. The coke downloading software doesn’t have an installation package, it installs from an ActiveX control. I don’t have the permissions to install software, so I had to log out and and log in as administrator again.
4. I logged in as administrator, installed the software, and logged in as a user again. I logged into the system, I chose a song to download, and hit the download button. Internet Explorer disappeared. I stared at a blank desktop.
5. I opened IE again, logged in, chose the same song, and clicked download. The website said, “You have already downloaded this, are you sure you want to download it again?”. I clicked on the “My Library” link, and sure enough the song was there, so I clicked on the “download schedule” button. Internet Explorer disappeared.

I am now going to download 38 songs with bit-torrent, and throw the coke ring pulls in the bin. On a related note, have a look at pyMusique, a self described “fair interface to the iTunes Music Store”. It’s a pretty GTK2 application for downloading music from iTunes, from any operating system.

This is very cool: Colorization Using Optimization

Marked B/W image

Result

I just stumbled across Downs, Kansas while hitting ‘random page’ on Wikipedia. What an odd place America is.