Coffee Porridge

StarCraft 2 has been released... finally!

2010-08-17T22:43:00.008+08:00

after more than decade since its first release, and more than 3 years after Blizzard announced its development, StarCraft 2 had been finally released! *yey* though, i'm quite late reannouncing it. *boo*

people have been long awaiting its release, and Blizzard successfully kept the drool flowing through updates, news, press releases, beta releases, and Battle Reports. while, its avid fans flooded the internet with secondhand information, even gossips. we - yes, including me - got (im)patiently hooked and prepared ourselves to once again battle the Protoss, Terran, or Zerg. it's like eating a ratatouille that will take you back to your childhood days (where mom used to nag you about wasting too much time playing that stupid game). *huhuhu*

thanks to such anticipation, StarCraft 2 sold more than a million during the first day of its release and another half a million the following day, including digital downloads, making it The Best-Selling PC Game of 2010 and The Fastest-Selling Strategy Game of All Time. *clap clap clap*

it's also surprising though that in less than a month, there already are pirated copies of the game, cracks, and launchers. it seems that while Blizzard was finalising the game, the guys were getting busy studying how to successfully by-pass the game's authentication. and they were indeed successful! it seems these guys work even more swiftly.

but the danger perhaps is, people's expectations are high considering the long and grueling wait. can Blizzard deliver? is StarCraft 2 really worth the wait and the buck? i can't tell you myself - i honestly haven't completed the campaign yet and played the Versus A.I. mode. we'll soon see. *wink*

StarCraft 2 was released last 27 July 2010 simultaneously in North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Indonesia, Macau, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand.

how to install CHDK software into your Canon PowerShot

2010-08-17T21:09:00.052+08:00

ever bored of your Canon PowerShot point-and-shoot camera? ever wanted to upgrade to a DSLR but don't have enough cash? this is the solution to your problems.

no, i'm not selling anything like that in Home TV Shopping. you don't have to spend your precious cash. all you need is a computer (obviously you have one), a memory card reader, internet access, and your common sense; of course, your Canon PowerShot and its memory card too!

what am i talking about? i'm talking about the CHDK. in a nutshell, Canon Hack Development Kit or CHDK is a free software that enhances the capabilities of and provides the user extended control over a number of Canon PowerShot point-and-shoot or digital compact cameras. some of these enhancements are, among others:

.:RAW recording and manipulation, with experimental support for the open Digital Negative (DNG) RAW standard;.:camera parameters override: exposures from 64s~1/64000s with flash sync; aperture range from f2.7~f11, ISO and focus;

.:scripts (i.e, enables motion detection, fast enough to capture lightning!);

.:focus bracketing with unlimited shots;

.:customisable on-screen display (OSD), live histogram, grids;.:zebra mode that displays under and overexposed areas;.:depth of field (DoF) calculator;

.:battery indicator;.:file browser;.:text reader;

.:calendar;

.:games (yes, even games! cool eh?).

it's not a permanent firmware upgrade. it's installed in the camera's memory card and loaded upon bootup. so don't worry about it being a hack, it could easily be disabled whenever you don't feel the need of it by reformatting the memory card, nor does it void the warranty. but there is still risk of damaging your camera so be cautious.

genesis

2008-01-29T21:18:00.022+08:00

i'd rather start off with a sensible research than some rubbish post about a mosquito bite or how fun secretly taking pictures of a sneezing person could be - these kinds of posts will soon follow... not now ht. *hark hark hark*

the word, blog is what you get when you try to combine the words, web and log or weblog, coined by Jorn Barger in December 1997. while in 1999, Peter Merholz came up with the pronunciation wee-blog.

yet G. Raikundalia and M. Rees, lecturers from Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia were said to have first discussed weblog on their paper titled Exploiting the World-Wide Web for Electronic Meeting Document Analysis and Management in 1995. although they proposed the use of a web browser to document meetings, their idea appears what blogs have evolved into.

however, its origins are relative to what blogs are: some consider blogs as webpages specially of links to other webpages or linklogs; some say these are online personal journal; while my uncle defines blogs as the sound associated with an accident brought about by mere stupidity.

several types of blogs have been named according to its content perhaps as an attempt to classify its growing diversity: artlog for arts, photoblog for photos, vlog for videos, mp3 blog for music, podcasting for audio, microblog for short texts, moblog for blogs through mobile phones, and tumblelogs for mixed media types. its varieties are increasing comparable to the varieties of silogs (sinangag at itlog). we have the traditional tapsilog for tapa, tocilog for tocino, and longsilog for longanisa, but we also have hotsilog for hotdog, porksilog for porchop, daingsilog for daing, and pakaplog for pan de sal at kape.

it was said web logs started out as linklogs when in 1992, Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, an English developer and the inventor of the World Wide Web, first posted his own linklog of all new websites then. while, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) kept a similar linklog in June 1993, listing new websites.

in January 1994, Justine Hall put up his own linklog which also included reviews of other sites. two years later, however, his linklog eventually evolved into his personal daily online journal as was Jerry Pournelle.

in February 1996, Dave Winer chronicled the 24-Hours of Democracy Project, and in April, he launched what became Scripting News in 1997, which is a news page for Frontier Software users. Userland, the company he heads, released Radio Userland, one of the earliest blogging software tools.

then as mentioned, Jorn Barger came into picture in December 1997 with his introduction of the term weblog. while, Jesse James Garrett, editor of Infosift, listed 23 weblogs in existence, which he sent to Cameron Barrett who published the list on Camworld in November 1998. people became interested in reading and/or creating web logs, and so did Peter Merholz. he was said to break the word into weblog into the phrase we blog, as the sidebar in his blog, www.PeterMe.com in April or May 1998. it was inevitably shortened to the term blog (perhaps because weblog was too long a word to pronounce then).

the number of people interested in blogging started to grow like mushrooms during a thunderstorm such that they started to create a number of uninteresting blogs. it was said that Cameron's list became so unimaginably long that he started listing only his faves. in early 1999, Brigitte Eaton launched EatonWeb, the first portal put up to specifically maintain a list of blogs. she had one-and-only-one-yet-strict criterion though: the entries should be dated! people debated about [what was and what was not a blog] for a moment, but since EatonWeb Portal was said to maintain the most complete list of blogs that then to exist, Brigitte's definition prevailed. *clap clap clap*Scott Rosenberg, who co-founded Salon as a technology editor, was one of the first media person who took the time to write about blogs, and the emergence of who he called web journalists.in October 1998, OpenDiary was launched which was the first community to offer the readers to comment (or perhaps to spam and to bump) on other entries.

1999 proved to be a notably momentous year for the cyber journalising realm, when in March, Brad Fitzpatrick, a popular blogger then, launched LiveJournal or LJ. in July, Andrew Smales launched Pitas, the first free blogging service which provided for the first time a set of user-friendly tools necessary to setup a blog... and did i say it's free? it was said to be an easier alternative to maintaining a news page on a website. Groksoup also released its own version. and in August, Pyra Labs, co-founded by Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan and later acquired by Google in February 2003, was said to coin the word blogger, launched its own, which had evolved into... THIS. while in September, DiaryLand was launched focusing more on personal journal entries. and in late 1999, software developer Dave Winer introduced Edit This Page, while Jeff Campbell his Velocinews. these services were all designed to easily publish blogs... and they're all free!

since then and until now, blogging is diversifying through the creativity and imagination of people who *ehem* are into this personally eventful virtual world. every entry is but a history...sources:

http://www.blogherald.com/2005/03/06/a-short-history-of-blogging

http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

and so it began...

2008-01-29T20:08:00.001+08:00

by my boss' daily rhetoric, which apparently is effective, and by my utter disbelief, i'm now setting up my very own blog. *clap clap clap*

i used to think that i don't have the luxury of time and more importantly, the literary talent to invite readers. i honestly think that i'd encourage rather avid critics than aficionados. hence, i ignored every urge of creating my personal blog. however, as it turns out, i'm proved wrong since i'm now investing my time and *ehem* my self-proclaimed-but-yet-to-realise talent as i gave into this online vogue.

so, this is what it feels like blogging huh!