Life hacking #1 - geek method of recognizing left and right sides

Hello everyone,

A lot of people have problems with recognizing left and right sides. This could lead to serious problems like driving a car in wrong way and ending with crashed car because one had driven into one way street from the other end ;) These problems aren't always as dangerous, but very often are reason of a little of pain in the ass for example:
Me: "click icon on the left to open 'My Computer'"
Second person: [is searching on the right side with the cursor]
Me: [my reaction http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY-03vYYAjA ]

Come on, it's simple to recognize the sides correctly! I've learned it as a 5 year old boy with use of Amiga 500 mouse ;) and it's true.

It was EXTREMELY  important to recognize sides in games, because left mouse button was responsible for one set of actions, while right mouse button for the other set of actions. So with that knowledge I've always recalled on which side is left button and binded it with left hand (the same story with right hand).

This is really working and if you (or your kids) have problems with this, feel free to check it out :)

A little legend:

Casual PC mouse

 Edit: I've decided to put picture of hero of this story, the old, the good Amiga 500 Mouse

Amiga 500 Mouse

Playstation Network data leaked!

Hello,

This post is rather long and ain't funny, but maybe you will take it more easy after watching this gif:

Bad news for most of us. As you may know, the PSN wasn't operational for past few days. Here's some official information I've found on Playstation Blog:

Valued PlayStation Network/Qriocity Customer:
We have discovered that between April 17 and April 19, 2011, certain PlayStation Network and Qriocity service user account information was compromised in connection with an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into our network. In response to this intrusion, we have:
Temporarily turned off PlayStation Network and Qriocity services;
Engaged an outside, recognized security firm to conduct a full and complete investigation into what happened; and
Quickly taken steps to enhance security and strengthen our network infrastructure by re-building our system to provide you with greater protection of your personal information.

We greatly appreciate your patience, understanding and goodwill as we do whatever it takes to resolve these issues as quickly and efficiently as practicable.

Although we are still investigating the details of this incident, we believe that an unauthorized person has obtained the following information that you provided: name, address (city, state, zip), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password and login, and handle/PSN online ID. It is also possible that your profile data, including purchase history and billing address (city, state, zip), and your PlayStation Network/Qriocity password security answers may have been obtained. If you have authorized a sub-account for your dependent, the same data with respect to your dependent may have been obtained. While there is no evidence at this time that credit card data was taken, we cannot rule out the possibility. If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, out of an abundance of caution we are advising you that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may have been obtained.

For your security, we encourage you to be especially aware of email, telephone, and postal mail scams that ask for personal or sensitive information. Sony will not contact you in any way, including by email, asking for your credit card number, social security number or other personally identifiable information. If you are asked for this information, you can be confident Sony is not the entity asking. When the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services are fully restored, we strongly recommend that you log on and change your password. Additionally, if you use your PlayStation Network or Qriocity user name or password for other unrelated services or accounts, we strongly recommend that you change them, as well.

To protect against possible identity theft or other financial loss, we encourage you to remain vigilant, to review your account statements and to monitor your credit reports. We are providing the following information for those who wish to consider it:

U.S. residents are entitled under U.S. law to one free credit report annually from each of the three major credit bureaus. To order your free credit report, visit www.annualcreditreport.com or call toll-free (877) 322-8228.

We have also provided names and contact information for the three major U.S. credit bureaus below. At no charge, U.S. residents can have these credit bureaus place a “fraud alert” on your file that alerts creditors to take additional steps to verify your identity prior to granting credit in your name. This service can make it more difficult for someone to get credit in your name. Note, however, that because it tells creditors to follow certain procedures to protect you, it also may delay your ability to obtain credit while the agency verifies your identity. As soon as one credit bureau confirms your fraud alert, the others are notified to place fraud alerts on your file. Should you wish to place a fraud alert, or should you have any questions regarding your credit report, please contact any one of the agencies listed below.

Experian: 888-397-3742; www.experian.com; P.O. Box 9532, Allen, TX 75013
Equifax: 800-525-6285; www.equifax.com; P.O. Box 740241, Atlanta, GA 30374-0241
TransUnion: 800-680-7289; www.transunion.com; Fraud Victim Assistance Division, P.O. Box 6790, Fullerton, CA 92834-6790

You may wish to visit the web site of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission at www.consumer.gov/idtheft or reach the FTC at 1-877-382-4357 or 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20580 for further information about how to protect yourself from identity theft. Your state Attorney General may also have advice on preventing identity theft, and you should report instances of known or suspected identity theft to law enforcement, your State Attorney General, and the FTC. For North Carolina residents, the Attorney General can be contacted at 9001 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-9001; telephone (877) 566-7226; or www.ncdoj.gov. For Maryland residents, the Attorney General can be contacted at 200 St. Paul Place, 16th Floor, Baltimore, MD 21202; telephone: (888) 743-0023; or www.oag.state.md.us.

We thank you for your patience as we complete our investigation of this incident, and we regret any inconvenience. Our teams are working around the clock on this, and services will be restored as soon as possible. Sony takes information protection very seriously and will continue to work to ensure that additional measures are taken to protect personally identifiable information. Providing quality and secure entertainment services to our customers is our utmost priority. Please contact us at 1-800-345-7669 should you have any additional questions.

Sincerely,
Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony Network Entertainment

So our data is in danger, better review if your passwords were unique for PSN, if not - I advice you to change it everywhere.

Considering Credit Card problems.. My first idea is to block it via provider, because could lead to REALLY BIG problems if intruders use our CC information...

New Nintendo Wii rumors

Hello,

Have you heard rumors about new video games console from Nintendo? Project Café. I think that it;s designed for me, because of my coffee addiction ;) Anyway from Wikipedia and other sources it should handle HD resolution (finally!) and controller with built-in screen. It should be a little more powerful than Playstation 3 and Xbox360.

About internals: rumors says that it should be powered by custom made IBM processor with three cores, GPU should be from ATI (R700 family) and 512MB of RAM. Doesn't sounds futuristic, because PS3 and X360 tend to be outdated soon.

The biggest evolution seems to be a controller. Gamecube (<3) based with 2 analog sticks and before mentioned LCD screen.

I wonder how it will look like and what games will serve to us. Are you waiting for new console?

Wiiii

Polish absurds #1 - Tu-154 and Jesus Christ grave

Hello!

I've found interesting topic - polish absurds. If you like it I will sometimes post something crazy about my country instead of tech stuff.

(Some historical stuff, if you know something about Poland and Tu-154 tragedy, just skip this section)
First of all. Poland is a catholic country, it should stick only to religion but very often politics is merging with religion. Yes, it sucks. I do believe that you know that about year ago the plane Tu-154 has crashed in Smolensk (Russia) with polish president, officers and let me name them "elite of our country". Of course it was tragedy for us but this is a point where religion sticked to it making joke from a tragedy.

IF YOU SKIPPED LAST SECTION, PLEASE START READING HERE.

It's Easter time, so in churches there were placed artificial graves of Jesus Christ as a symbol of his death for our sins, but... one of them is really crazy because of last year's plane crash. They've actually made Jesus Christ's grave out of fake Tu-154 plane. Man, this is crazy and I feel sorry for one who made this.

Tu-154 Jesus grave

 

Come on. I really feel like they think that former president of Poland was actually Jesus Christ. How should I interpret it? Jesus didn't died in plane, they should know it as catholics.

How do you feel about joining politics and religion?

Back in game and contest winner!

Hello everybody!

I am sorry that I was not active for past few days, I was really busy. Work stuff kills me. Anyway. I've closed my eyes and randomly pointed out the winner who is... MICHAEL!

Ok.. I am joking ;) I've selected the winner via the choosing the random number (ofc I've cut off double-posters and myself) and the winner was chosen. Who is..

Clint Mullins

Congratulations! :) Please enter e-mail address in comments so I could send you a code. 

I already have some more Humble Bundle #3 gift codes, so stay tuned!

I am currently writing the next post, so be back soon!

Humble Bundle #3! Hell yeah, the awesome games pack for third time!

Hello!

I am glad to announce you the Humble Bundle #3. It's a gamepack which consists of few awesome games by FROZENBYTE. The best thing is that they are available on for... PAY WHAT YOU WANT! So you decide how much will you spend on these games starting from $0.01! The another neat thing is that they are spending some cash for charity organizations, so you may play games and do really nice things :)

Anyway.. maybe I will introduce this edition's games:

Humble Bundle games

Maybe you don't know them all, but.. Trine one is awesome! Here's official trailer:

So, better check out because... I've got some kind of...

CONTEST

Yes, I am not crazy.. I have 1 gift code for Humble Bundle #3 games to give away for FREE, so leave here a comment and I will RANDOMLY choose who of you wins :) The contest lasts till my next entry, so don't wait long for a comment! I will send link with code through e-mail to the glorious winner!

Polybius, the mystery game

Hello everyone!

I'd like to write something about Polybius, the game which officially never existed. This game had only few copies in form of an arcade. There are some pictures of machine and game itself, but there is no proof that they are real. The gameplay is rumored to be the as simple arcade game with logical elements. The one of pictures of the machine:

Polybius

The most interesting part is that kids playing the game were reporting that they couldn't sleep, or they didn't feel comfortable or even had nightmares after the play. I've read somewhere that they have reached the guy who played this as a kid, but the only think he could remember was that the machine has been taken after one month after he played it first. Another interesting thing is that there were "men in black" interested in the performance of game and how it influenced the kids, creepy thing.


It seems that it is just the Internet Urban Legend, but there are many people who actually believe in the story. The funny thing would be that it was present even in Simpsons series, nice "easter egg" :)

Polybius in Simspons

What do you think about this game? Is it real, or fake? To be honest I feel a little creepy right now :/

Edit:

some sources:

• http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=11344 

• http://www.joltcountry.com/polybius.html 

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybius_(game) 

Edit2:

Shit, I've freaked a little because I wanted to post here an address of webpages from which I took the information.. but I can not find one, it even is not in my history of browsing... :S

External hard disc drive deal!

Hello!

Out of space on computer? Want to buy new disc? Well I strongly advice you to think over if your ebay deal is legit. Because you may run from this:

Into that:

This has been found somewhere in Russia, the guy has reported it as broken at PC repairman. This HDD was able to hold only 5 last minutes of a movie.. as it is 128MB flash memory configured to overwrite everything as it reaches it's limit.

More information HERE.

I hope that I will never buy such crap ;)

Coffee heaven or hell?

Hello guys,

I am overworked lately and I need so much power to exist and work efficiently. To do that I drink this black liquid angel called coffee. I am able to drink 4 or 5 cups of strong coffee daily, it's way too much, but it's so delicious.

I was reading about dangerous levels of caffeine, but information is usually not specific. They are telling about milligrams or cups limits, but how should I know how much mg I've put into my cup? I don't have kitchen scales in my eyes :F

Coffee

So, another question for you.  How much coffee do you drink a day? I don't respect "none" answer though :P

GMAIL AND KINNECT IS _REAL_!

HI GUYS, FIRST OF ALL.. SORRY FOR WRITING THIS IN UPPERCASE, BUT MAN IT'S SICK!

REMEMBER MY ENTRY ABOUT GMAIL MOTION? WELL IT SEEMS THAT IT BECAME REAL THING. I AM IN SHOCK AND I DON'T HAVE WORDS TO DESCRIBE IT.

LET'S MAKE IT SHORT AND TAKE IT IN TWO STEPS

•  WATCH THE VIDEO

• TAKE YOUR JAW FROM THE GROUND

THEY'VE MADE REAL GMAIL MOTION, IT'S IN EARLY BETA BUT MAN! I AM SURE THEY ARE WORKING FOR GOOGLE FROM NOW ON!

New layout to celebrate 100+ followers!

First of all... Hi guys! How do you like new design? I've put classic badge of awesomeness on the background - NES controller, everybody loves it, everybody hates it ;) However for sure it's a massive nostalgia generator for most of us. I hope that it will tell newcomers "Hey, this guy sure is into old games", hell yes I am.


Not talking much more I'd like to introduce you awesome 8 bit music generated with use of NES console, the guy is Trash80 and he's giving away his music for free both on 8bitpeoples.com and  trash80.net. Here's sample of his skills:

Trash80 - Sodium Sonet (live) 

 How do you like chiptune music? Do you know any good artists?

The best April Fools' Day pranks

Ok, I've found very nice collection of pranks. Let me introduce it to you:

1. Interactive Portal Shirt

Fan of Portal? Now you can enjoy it real life Portal just by meeting real nerd like you :D More info and tesers HERE

2. DSPhone

Playstation Portable has it's phone version Xperia Play how about Nintendo DS? Allright! Let me introduce you brand new DSPhone directly from Japan!

More information for Japanese guys HERE

3.  Grand Theft Auto: Harbour City Leaked

Big fan of GTA series? You sure will be surprised and shit of happiness by seeing this!

New game, new information HERE

4. Sony announces successor to Blu-ray, gives away PSP2 plans by accident

Wondering about new handheld from Sony? New information leaked! It will have micro Blu-ray discs! PSP's UMDs are too small ;)

More information about prank HERE



That's it, I am always happy to look for 1st april pranks and more happy I am if I didn't get tricked :P Please comment which of these pranks are the best in your opinion, or maybe you've got another fav?

Cleesh.org the webcomic heaven

Hello everyone. While I am gathering yesterday's April Fools' pranks I've came with an idea to recommend you my fav webcomic site. It's a webcomic reader which full customization. You are allowed to select webcomics you are willing to read and check them daily with use of just one website. If you want to try just click cleesh.org .

Here's configuration screen.

As you can see it is easy to select desired webcomics, or even order them in proper way. The neat thing is the visual representation of the webcomics.

It is easy to create an account, the administrator states that he will try to add new webcomics if there are some requests.

What are your fav webcomics? If you want to check mine click HERE.

Gmail Motion BETA!

Bored of using mouse and keyboard to communicate via computer? Google has annouced new way of communication! Move your body to send an e-mail!

Some schematics of work:

This gives us great opportunity of moving and get healthier with just using your e-mail account. Send e-mails and burn fat! It reminds me Nintendo Wii and Kinnect :)

Some testimonials:

• "No longer will people be required bend to the will of technology. Instead, technology will now bend to our will." 

• Lorraine Klayman, Environmental Movement Specialist, Nevada Polytechnic College

• "It is commonly known that 80% of communication is non-verbal. Gmail Motion not only accepts this fact – it embraces it." 
• Dennis Tooley, Ph.D, California Center for Kinesis and Paralanguage

• "Kudos to the Gmail team for bridging the divide. I'm eagerly awaiting the next version with ASL turbo boost!" 
• Ken Harrenstien, Software Engineer, Google Accessibility Team

More information HERE

Chrome AdBlock Freedom

Real life ad block

Here's how it works: when powered off, AdBlock Freedom functions as sunglasses. Slide a discreet switch on the frame, and AdBlock Freedom begins scanning your view for objects that it recognizes as ads. Any detected ad gets a "smudge" overlay to blend it into its surroundings. A picture is worth a thousand words.

More information HERE !