From my favorite YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/ZOMGitsCriss: She is a shooting star leaping through the skies , she is a satellite , She is out of control

Yes, I admit I’m a nerd. So … I was thinking… shall i subscribe to Marvel Digital Comics? It did pass my mind a couple of times the past years and maybe this is finally the right moment.

advantages

a) When I scroll through the covers of the series online (you NEED to see this to know what it feels like), I get both a lot of memories AND I see a lot of series that I never got a chance of to read and which I actually want to read

b) I then can read them at any time that I am online e.g. lying on my poolbed at my vacation address looking over the beach… wow….

c) There are thousands of comics, (more than 6000!) I could just save myself a lot of book space and just read the stuff online. I could even blog about it so I have at least a "checkmark" in my blog that I finished a series. (looking at the Billy behind me full of comics)

d) It only costs $60 (€ 46) so.. that is what I smoke away in 10 days. So.. I could stop smoking for 10 days and then even have a profit of €4 (and have a whole year fun of it). (Although I don’t know if after a year I have to pay $9.99 a month)

e) I can pick up my old hobby / get-away-from-reality-thing in the digital age

e) It is hassle free, I can just scroll through the catalog, click a series and start reading and "them" will fill the catalog faster than I can read the comics

f) The quality of the comics is excellent since it uses the original scans

disadvantages

a) yet another $60 on yet another subscription I have to explain to my egaa (what? and you already have all those comics)

b) what if darkhorse comes out with a subscription? and what if image comics goes for a digital subscription  besides their free #1 comics? and what if DC adds their massive archive also for a subscription? And Vertigo? And… I would absolutely go broke! and… there is still so much more free to read…

lemme think about it…

If we would like to create a database of a set of websites and assign to these a popularity number this can become fairly complex fairly quickly.

1. root level domain and how to get second level domains

We start by creating a list of official all root level domains and official second level domains, for these we have as sources:

- http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/ : the complete list of root level domains and, when clicking through, each registration organization in each country / part which gives us information on the official list.
- http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/netwerk/dns/effective_tld_names.dat?raw=1 : an open source list on mozilla which gives a listing
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.XX : for each domain extension there are some parts on the official subdomains

In my experience until now none of these three individually provides a correct list. The Mozilla list is fairly outdated, the official registers often don’t specify the complete list of possibilities and here and there Wikipedia misses some. However when you put the effort in combining these you should end with a nice new overview. Which is what I did and which consists of hundreds of lines which I put in a regex to check it. E.g. for brazil:

        // —————————————————————-
        // .br (incl.ccTLD)
        // Brazil
        // http://registro.br/ / Registration date 1989-04-18.
        // notice: also br.com
        // http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.br
   ‘\.adm\.br|’ . // Administrators
   ‘\.adv\.br|’ . // Lawyers
   ‘\.agr\.br|’ . // Agriculture-related companies and/or websites
   ‘\.am\.br|’ . // AM radio companies, licenced by the Brazilian Communications Ministry
   ‘\.arq\.br|’ . // Architecture
   ‘\.art\.br|’ . // Art: music, folklore, etc.
   ‘\.ato\.br|’ . // Actors
   ‘\.b\.br|’ .  // * Exclusively for bancary environiment use (online banking, etc).
   ‘\.bio\.br|’ . // Biologists
   ‘\.blog\.br|’ . // Blogs
   ‘\.bmd\.br|’ . // Biomedics
   ‘\.can\.br|’ . // ?? mentioned on mozilla not in wikipedia
   ‘\.cim\.br|’ . // Realtors
   ‘\.cng\.br|’ . // Scenographers
   ‘\.cnt\.br|’ . // Accountants
   ‘\.com\.br|’ . // Commercial websites in general and individuals.
   ‘\.coop\.br|’ . // Cooperatives
   ‘\.ecn\.br|’ . // Economy
   ‘\.edu\.br|’ . // Higher education institutions
   ‘\.eng\.br|’ . // Engineers
   ‘\.esp\.br|’ . // Sports
   ‘\.etc\.br|’ . // Entities that do not fit in other categories
   ‘\.eti\.br|’ . // I.T. Specialists
   ‘\.far\.br|’ . // Pharmacies and drugstores
   ‘\.flog\.br|’ . // Photoblogs
   ‘\.fm\.br|’ . // FM radio companies, licenced by the Brazilian Communications Ministry
   ‘\.fnd\.br|’ . // Phonoaudiologists
   ‘\.fot\.br|’ . // Photographers
   ‘\.fst\.br|’ . // Physiotherapists
   ‘\.g12\.br|’ . // K12 education institutions
   ‘\.ggf\.br|’ . // Geographers
   ‘\.gov\.br|’ . // Government entities
   ‘\.imb\.br|’ . // Real estate
   ‘\.ind\.br|’ . // Industries
   ‘\.inf\.br|’ . // Media and information
   ‘\.jor\.br|’ . // Journalists
   ‘\.jus\.br|’ . // Brazilian Judiciary Branch of the State.
   ‘\.lel\.br|’ . // Auctioneers
   ‘\.mat\.br|’ . // Mathematicians and Statisticians
   ‘\.med\.br|’ . // Physicians
   ‘\.mil\.br|’ . // Brazilian Armed Forces
   ‘\.mus\.br|’ . // Musicians
   ‘\.net\.br|’ . // Commercial activities. Formerly it was for providers of physical communication means, legally habilitated for the prestation of public telecommunication services.
   ‘\.nom\.br|’ . // People
   ‘\.not\.br|’ . // Notaries
   ‘\.ntr\.br|’ . // Nutritionists
   ‘\.odo\.br|’ . // Dentists
   ‘\.org\.br|’ . // Non-profit non-governmental entities
   ‘\.ppg\.br|’ . // Publicity specialists and Marketeers
   ‘\.pro\.br|’ . // Teachers
   ‘\.psc\.br|’ . // Psychologists
   ‘\.psi\.br|’ . // Online service providers
   ‘\.qsl\.br|’ . // Radio amateurs
   ‘\.radio.br|’ . // * Entities that wish to broadcast radio
   ‘\.rec\.br|’ . // Recreational activities, entertainment, leisure, games, etc.
   ‘\.slg\.br|’ . // Sociologists
   ‘\.srv\.br|’ . // Services providers
   ‘\.taxi\.br|’ . // Taxis
   ‘\.teo\.br|’ . // Theologians
   ‘\.tmp\.br|’ . // Temporary events, such as fairs and exhibitions
   ‘\.trd\.br|’ . //  Translators
   ‘\.tur\.br|’ . // Tourism
   ‘\.tv\.br|’ . // Sound and image broadcasters, licenced by the Brazilian Communications Ministry
   ‘\.vet\.br|’ . // Veterinarians
   ‘\.vlog\.br|’ . // Videologs
   ‘\.wiki\.br|’ . // Wikis
   ‘\.zlg\.br|’ . // Zoologists

This is quite some work but it gives you a good feeling on the official ones and you will create a better class than classes which are merely based on the Mozilla listing.

Please remind yourself that you should check on the last 2 parts of an url and not to use a simple preg_match on the complete url for the second level domains since then you would also find e.g. http://whatever.co.uk.leau.net  which is obviously not correct.

2. unofficial "top" level domains

Although you may now think that your job is done since you have a nice list of all official domains, the truth is far from that. Because there are also kind-of unofficial popular top level domains.

For example: blogspot.com

Obviously you want to count each blogspot user’s blog as a unique thing with under this the blog entries the person wrote. (apart from blogspot.com kind-of sites there are also lots of "unofficial nic’s" operating under certain subdomains).

And there the trouble starts because:

a) each entitiy owning a domain and having multiple users or organizations under it uses a different structure for organizing it.

e.g.:

• for blogspot you would have myname.blogspot.com (or wordpress: lorelle.wordpress.com)
• for e.g. youtube you have youtube.com/user/whatever
• for sellaband users you have sellaband.com/projects/cecilemorel/

So in other words: where on the official IANA / TLD structure there is "something defined" that you can structure, on this level there are a gazillion possibilities, some use subdomains and some use paths to "a specific part".

And in the example we give url’s that can be followed in some way by url hacking but there are also sites which simply use index?r=45 and index?r=85 … People can really invent anything

b) each entitiy can be split in multiple parts having multiple different sets of different trees think e.g. about the live.com structure, so you would have to find a way to find a certain string but… the string must be in the correct place e.g. mycopy.of.blogspot.com.leau.net/~unique_user should not be counted for blogspot. ( probably by partitioning your database based on the official first and second level domains in the first place but… you will find the same problem deeper down the string e.g. whatever.youtube.blogspot.leau.net/user/whatever.

c) some parts under a domain would belong to the main domain and some parts would belong to a specific user / organization / project. So even if you define a certain url as a unofficial "root" it could well be that some parts under there actually belong to the parent and not the child.

3 IP addresses

Then… you would also have IP addresses that are used for more than 1 site and which give some headaches on how to count them.

4. More

I have only scratched the surface here so therefore "part 1" , stay tuned for part 2

It’s a pity that .bv domains (Bouvet Island) can not be registered. I think an enormous amount of Dutch companies (BV’s) would direct register these domains.

Ik dacht dat ik Europa wel kende maar vandaag kwam ik de domein naam "AX" tegen die blijkbaar hoort bij de Aland eilanden, een onafhankelijke eiland rijkje naast Finland.

Het gebiedje hoort tot de 20 rijkste van Europa.

Toch weer mooi meegenomen die Triviant kennis, eens kijken of ik de Euro munt als hiernaast ergens tegenkom…

Als ze die domeinnaam registratie pagina nu eens in het Engels aanpassen verkoopt die domeinnaam wellicht wat beter: http://my.name.is.m.ax of http://freddy.kills.with.an.ax

Ook vast gehoord bij de koffie automaat: de 37 jarige man die met een Mercedes SLA AMG maar liefst 170 km per uur te hard reed. (Hij reed 290 kilometer per uur waar hij maar 120 mocht rijden).

Ik lees nu dat de beste man meer dan 1 miljoen dollar aan boete krijgt (SFr1.08m = 803 701.059 euro). (met name zo hoog omdat de boetes in Zwitserland gekoppeld zijn aan inkomen).

… dat is de hoogste verkeersboete ooit. wow. En ik maar balen als er weer eens een notificatie van een boete van 25 euro binnen komt…

Ik heb nog even gechecked op de boete berekenaar wat dat betekent in Nederland:

En de uitkomst is vrij generiek natuurlijk: het boetebedrag wordt individueel vastgesteld door het Openbaar Ministerie. Nu toch op die website aangekomen vond ik nog een leuk spelletje om je verkeerskennis te testen: "verkeerstalent of prent". (waarvoor je wel een unity 3d webplayer moet installeren):

Ik was er niet zo goed in maar wellicht win jij de prijs!

Kristopher Dukes mailed me to update the link to her new anti spyware site: http://www.fasterpccleanclean.com/ (and she also has http://www.kristopherdukes.com/) so … I thought I’d link it in a new post to combine two stories:

A few weeks ago a friend came with a laptop of which all file associations were gone. It was not even able anymore to execute an executable because those were linked to adobe… after some searching I found they installed an anti virus package "antivirus 2010 or something" which they found on the Internet. I learned that there are a gazillion fake packages out there, right on top of Google, who look like genuine antivirus or antispyware packages but which are actually programs that spread the stuff. Really amazing and of course for like 90% of the computer users …. "logical" to install… (I managed to get rid of the virus on my friend’s laptop using the free Malwarebytes Anti-Malware ) (yes that’s a "real" anti-irritating-stuff program).

On Kristopher Dukes site you will find many many examples of these fake programs. (I even read on the "Wireshark antivirus" … omg… they are faking even Wireshark), so that is one site to add on my soon to be anti-virus section on http://populair.eu.

Today I wanted to see a specific site in Internet Explorer because it "the look" was different as compared with other browsers. When I tried however to click "view page source" the source window popped up but it complete froze.

So I tried some fiddling and after a while I just decided to wait. And indeed after about 5-10 minutes having the view source window open in frozen state "suddenly" it unfroze and… the RoboForm toolbar popped up underneath.

So I think RoboForm is the problem here and, if you came here looking for the problem, other extensions which load something extra in the status bar.

So how to solve it? First I tried the obvious thing by going to the settings > programs > "invoegtoepassingen" (yes i have the dutch version) and disable it:

But of course, experienced in life, yes even after reboot, Although they are all "off" the roboform bar DOES popup underneath in the view source window AND as a toolbar in Internet Explorer … uhm….

So… ?? Ah… the solution is simple: simply click "hide toolbar" in the Roboform button itself in the toolbar and the thingie is gone. Whenever you want it back you can click "show toolbar" from the system tray icon.

solved. (although it is a workaround since obviously not having to wait for minutes would be better)

We gaan weer op vakantie!

… dus het onderwerp koffers komt weer ter sprake. (De huidige zijn "stuk" na jarenlange goede dienst dus we kunnen ze lenen (dat is het plan) maar parallel toch maar even kijken wat de kosten zouden zijn als ik ze nieuwe zou kopen. Ook handig, want dan kunnen we daar weer een aantal jaren mee vooruit).

in ons geval: We mogen maximaal 3×20=60kg meenemen.

Is meer of minder koffers beter?

Een gemiddelde grotere koffer weegt zelf al 5kg. Dat betekent dus:

• 3 koffers x 20 kg = 60 kg MAAR 60kg – ( 3 x 5 ) = 45kg die je eigenlijk meenement.
• 2 koffers x 30 kg = 60 kg MAAR 60kg – ( 2 x 5 ) = 50kg die je eigenlijk meenement.

Het betekent dus: hoe meer je je gewicht verdeeld, hoe meer je kwijt bent aan "koffergewicht". 1 lichtgewicht "zachte" koffer waarin je 60kg propt zou nog het beste zijn!

Hoe mag het gewicht verdeeld worden?

Je mag het gewicht verdelen op elk mogelijke manier. Maar……. ( in de praktijk ):

• in Engeland mag je koffer maximaal 23kg wegen (vanwege wetgeving voor de dragers)
• In veel andere landen is 30 tot 32 kilo het maximum (voor het bagage systeem en de dragers)
• In de VS en Mexico mag je maximaal 2 stuks pp meenemen.

Ik wil zelf het plan trekken om 2 koffers mee te nemen en die elk te vullen nabij de 30 kilogram. Dat scheelt ook met sjouwen van en naar het vliegveld. Zeker omdat we ook nog 2 kids mee te sjouwen hebben en handbagage.

Wat is de lichtste koffer?

Wat dus van belang is is het gewicht van de koffer.

Het is heel simpel wat ik wil: een spreadsheet met ALLE koffers gesorteerd op (inhoud/gewicht) en mogelijk verdeeld in harde en zachte koffers.

Even een paar voorbeelden om er een gevoel bij te krijgen:

	De samsonite B-Lite Upright 75 heeft een inhoud van 123.5 liter en weegt 3.7kg
	De samsonite Sky Wheeler Spinner 85 heeft een inhoud van 130 liter en weegt 5.64kg

Dus… is er ergens zo’n lijst of moet ik mijn avond spenderen in google spreadsheet om zo’n ding te maken??

As you might know there is only one real game for me: Risk.

And since the online era playing Risk online is pretty cool. It is where the Risk community meets.

Around 1998/1999 I played Risk on MS Zone. Great experience, great community and the online gameplay was cool and advanced (until it closed down). For some time I then played ATTACK on Facebook (from Zynga) which was not all as advanced as the Ms Zone experience but since there was a large community and a good system where players who left could be replaced by people joining this was again a very good experience. Especially the brainless "click to play" was addictive.

Unfortunately Hasbro is hunting online Risk place on the Internet, for years they are shutting down online Risk games "to protect the brand". So they did this also with Attack. I think Hasbro has no clue how they disappoint the core Risk fans on the planet time and time again by taking away places where this community can play and meet. I think most Risk players hate Hasbro by now… a lot (just think of all the time invested in an online version).

So… after they shut down Attack they brought out "Risk Factions" which I immediately bought for my X-Box. Playing the game in single player mode is nice. There are five short games which form a sort of story and they introduced some mods where you can e.g. conquer a temple to gain control of one other territory and some new maps. Which is nice in itself. Also nice are that the colors in the game are represented by robots (red), zombies (black), etc… I liked that idea.

But… of course playing by yourself is not what we buy these games for since 2000. Risk Factions allows you to play online in ranked and unranked games. So actually I was excited. But…. the online gaming experience is so enormously bad that I can not even believe that someone actually programmed this. Did they never play Risk online?

- When you invest time to play a game and you have actually a chance of winning whenever the player on the side thinks he better switches off … you get "lost connection with host" WHAT THE F***. Did we ever see this on other multiplayer risk version? No of course not because any simple soul understands that you do not want to play for 2 hours and NEVER ever win a game because other people just drop out of the game. All other online version took care of this as a basic requirement for their game with different solutions.

- In other many many instances you simply get a freeze and I mean a real freeze, the game just doesn’t show any progress anymore (also probably because someone dropped out) and if you manage to get to the menu you have to "concede" (especially bad since in Ranked games… you have another lost game).

- When someone leaves and the game is not frozen their armies are like "stupid bots", which I think is the most simplistic solution I have seen for the past 15 years on playing Risk online.

So I, not really a Risk n00b, declare this to be the worst Risk ever. I will also close my X-Box Live account since there is no use for it, I only had it for this game. I think Microsoft should ban this game from X-Box Live for the worst gaming experience ever.

And Hasbro … if you are not able to give the community a decent online Risk version because you lack the skills then do not shut down community places where there are people who really like the game itself and where people do produce at least playable versions which you are obviously are not able to.

And now I’m going to comment on all places where this game is reviewed.