When it comes to music, I’d say Mike Oldfield is certainly a God. I’ve felt the same ever since the first time I heard his music [I was an infant then… my parents were listening to Mike Oldfield]. Mike Oldfield’s music has been with me my entire life, and I would even say that in some ways, it has saved my life. The song Shabda is from his latest album called “Music of the Sphere”. Don’t mind the video as it’s not official… just listen to the music.

I guess if you know me or if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you probably know that for the past few years I’ve been a huge fan of Opera, and it’s pretty much the only browser I’ve been using. I did always have Firefox installed for the sake of seeing how my various web pages look in it, and every time there was a new version of Firefox, I did give it a try. But so far Opera had always been better. Why? Because of a lot of cool features that it has. The smallest little things that make my life easier. I like the way Opera handles downloads, I like the Opera speed dial feature, I like the fact that it’s toolbars are customizable since I have a habit of making my toolbars as thin as possible [using as little rows as possible], I like the fact that it had lower memory usage than Firefox, and I like it’s speed of loading pages. And these are just to mention a very few. So I guess it’s now clear what I mean, when I say “I just switched my default browser to Firefox”! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Firefox finally sold me!
About a week ago I installed the new Firefox 3 Beta. It was just supposed to satisfy my curiosity, but that wasn’t exactly what happened. For starters I opened up a bunch of tabs and had a look at my mem usage. Low. Lower than Opera!! Then I loaded a few pages and darn it, this thing’s fast! It’s now faster than Opera! And unlike Opera it doesn’t simply re-display the entire already loaded info from the cash [which in case of Opera, usually means you have to refresh the page a few times in order to see the changes that you just made to your web page]. Then I had a look at the add-ons … ah well. Speed Dial, only better: tabbed and completely customizable. The toolbars are also fully [and I mean FULLY] customizable, and quite neat, clean and thin. There’s also this other add-on that can handle your downlaods and alike in a neat, auto-hidable sidebar. And again, this is only to name a few. It’s also the case that Firefox passed the Acid 2 test with no problem, and had a pretty good score in the impossible Acid 3 test as well. And then of course there’s the issues that Opera has with handling things like xml pages. If your xml doesn’t have a defined style [for example if you’re looking at somebody’s pure xml APML or something similar], Opera will end up showing you nothing. But Firefox can show you the pure xml with no problem. And I could go on about this for a few more hours, but lets just say that Firefox seems to have finally done it. I’m now very much looking forward to the alpha. Lets see how that one will look like. =)

Kool Update: I just received an email from i-espero.info, and guess what, the DVD is back! =) It’s available again on their website for download, and this time it’s 1 self-extracting package [making lifes easeir]. They also have some other neat collections to download, including an Esperanto resource CD and a very nice book collection. They torrents are also seeded again, so do check them out: Esperanto CD [Lingua Incognita] , Esperanto Books .

A while ago, while digging for useful resources to help me improve my Esperanto skills, I came across i-espero.info. It’s a very useful website containing all sorts of interesting articles and resources in Esperanto. One of the very cool items I found on their website was this Esperanto Elektronike DVD, which is a collection of cources, vidoes, esperanto wiki, books, music, and everything you might ever need for practicing Esperanto. They were offering the DVD content as free download which was fantastic. Now the problem is that they no longer have the option of downloading the package from their website, mainly because of the huge size of it I would guess. They are distributing the package now through torrents, but the problem is that this torrent is never really seeded nowadays. The other problem is that although the package is not thaaaaaaat huge [something more than 2GBs], but the number of files in it is completely insane. There are too many small information pages and such included. The total number of files is something more than a million. So even if somebody does download it, it’s a pain to unzip and manage on one’s hard drive. Since the content of the DVD is pretty much organized in some sort of an offline website, I figured it would be better for everyone, including myself and anyone else who might want to use this resources but not really be able or willing to download and manage them, if I just put the whole thing online. So now if you go to Esperanto.Aasemoon.com, you can access the unzipped version of the package as a sort of a website. Pain to upload it this way [as I couldn’t unzip 7z on my host, and re-zipping was out of the question], but now it’s pretty simple to use. So if you’re into learning Esperanto, check it out! =)

Well apparently his majesty the royal cuteness Honda’s ASIMO robot is planning on mesmerizing the audience by conducting the Detroit Symphony Orchestra performing “Impossible Dream”. This is going to be the opening for cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s performance. Read the whole story here.
Cool ha? =) I have been tracking the improvements and basically the process of “growing up” of this little creature from the start, as he’s pretty much the “Dream Come True” of Robotics enthusiasts such as myself. And I even had him as the topic for the papers for a couple of my engineering design related courses. Now I wonder if the videos for this performance are going to show up on YouTube, cause I have to say, I so badly want to see this! =D

So, I turned 25 today. Actually well, it’s a bit of a funny situation this year: I was born on Farvardin 31st of the Persian calendar, which is usually the same day as April 20th. So my official birthday is supposed to be on April 20th = Farvardin 31st. But this year is one of those mixed up years that Farvardin 31 = April 19th! =P So this pretty much means that I was born both today and tomorrow. [According to aMUSiC, the previous sentence is a “testament to temporal grammar”: I was born both today and tomorrow! =P] So yeah, the whole thing is a bit funny. And I guess it’s not even unexpected that my 25th is starting rather odd, as it’s obviously going to be one of the oddest, most twisted, most exciting, most weird, most complicated, most challenging, most curious, most … well… everything, years of my life. The start is quite fitting to what I know is coming. =} heee…. heee….. heee…. wish me luck…. O_o …. =D …. / … ?? …. heeee …….. !!&$$!#&%%@#&&%$***…

It was sometime near the end of 2005 when I first heard about the OpenID idea and concept, and I became and instant fan of it. For someone like me who uses an insane amount of websites and online services, the idea of not having to create a username and password for each one, and not having to fill in the profile each time, was such a pleasant notion. Not long after that I started testing various OpenID providers, including myOpenID, ClaimID and Verisign. So I registered my OpenID, but I didn’t use it that much because of a number of reasons. The idea of having an OpenID is very cool, but even today, [about 3 years later], not that many website are OpenID enabled just yet. I mean, for this to really work, it’s necessary that some of the major websites start supporting it, and so far they haven’t. What’s funny is that everybody is now offering to serve your OpenID, but they’re not accepting it if you try to login to their service using an OpenID provided by someone else. If you have a blogger profile, your URL is now your OpenID. But you can’t login to blogger using an OpenID from Verisign! Obviously everybody likes to advertise for themselves by providing the URL that the user is going to use everywhere, but they don’t like to go through the pain of supporting OpenID login. [I have to mention here, for anybody who might not know this, that your OpenID is a unique URL to some info page about you]. The other problem is that, if you already have an account in a website that now supports OpenID, there usually is no way of tying your already existing user info to your new OpenID. Although, I also have to mention that recently I saw a website doing that: aboutus.org. I really have to send a “way to go” to those guys, although mine didn’t work so far but at least they’re trying. So, it’s possible, it just takes some work.
On the plus side, there actually are a good number of websites that have started supporting OpenID [one of my favorites would be legaltorrents.com]. And day by day, more websites add OpenID login pages. That’s good news. So recently, I felt there are more places on the web that I can use my OpenID, which is cool.
But then, there was another problem. I didn’t like the fact that my ID, contains the provider’s URL. I also didn’t like it that it pointed to a profile page on the provider’s website. I mean if it’s supposed to be MY ultimate ID, it has to be MY URL, and pointing to my biggest online profile, which is my website. So I did some digging, and I found the solution to that too. I found an open source PHP application, called phpMyID, which works as your own personal provider. So you can have your own OpenID server, and then with a few steps you can use your own domain name as your OpenID. I set that up a couple of weeks ago, and so far I’ve had no problem using www.Aasemoon.com as my OpenID. I had a few people asking me how this whole thing works, so I’ve wrote a few paragraphs about OpenID in general, and setting up your own OpenID server and delegation, which you can view on the Programming & Web-Development page on my website.
So now, I only hope that at some point major online services will start supporting OpenID. Life will get a lot easier that way. =)

A few days ago I came across a group invitation on Facebook, that actually managed to get my attention. What I gathered about the group at the first glance, didn’t make much sense. I was thinking to myself that I’m probably a bit tired or reading too fast and I simply don’t get it. But unfortunately that wasn’t the case. Now this is old news, and could be that most of you have already heard about it, but somehow I had never came across the story of “Guillermo Habacuc Vargas” and his horrible crime that he likes to call art. From what I gathered, sometime on October last year, this so called “artist” from Costa Rica, paid a couple of kids to catch him a dog off of the street and then he chained the dog to the corner of an art gallery [a part of an exhibition in Nicaragua]. He didn’t feed the dog, and didn’t allow anybody else to do that either. The poor dog starved to death right in front of the eyes of tons of people walking in and out of the gallery, and nobody did a thing about it. Nobody. The bloody insane guy calls this art. What bothers me even more is that the so called “Prestigious Visual Arts Biennial of the Central American” decided that this horrible act was actually art, and Guillermo Habacuc Vargas has been invited to repeat his cruel action for the biennial of 2008. Unbelievable! I just feel my own blood boiling when I think about this. Right now there are tons of videos on YouTube showing the frustration of people from everywhere, and there’s a petition to try to stop this cruel act from happening again in 2008. Through this weblog you can find the petition, as well as an English translation of it, and some more information about the whole fiasco. I hope you’ll sign the petition if you haven’t already. And I certainly hope that this insane person will be stopped. I just can’t think of another dog having the same fate…. =”””(

Below is the “Cuss-O-Meter” result for my weblog. =) Apparently I’m not doing that much cussin’ around after all. I imagined, considering all that’s been going on recently with BlueHost and Rogers and all those other monster companies that I hate with passion, my cussin’ level would be somewhat higher than this. Ah well. I guess I should work on it!

Admittedly, I’ve never been a fan of the singer Pink. But today, my Mom emailed me the link to this YouTube video that took my attention quite a bit. Have a look…

Hey all, how was your long weekend? With the current Toronto weather, mine could have ended up quite boring. But of course it didn’t, as I was saved by the miracle of ASD! =D The Breakpoint demoparty was held during the weekend, and there were quite a few awesome demos competing in various categories, including ASD’s new demo by the name Metamorphosis. This demo is one of the most different, artistic and refreshing demos that I have seen up to this day. I’m not going to say more about it here, because you just have to see it. And by the way it seems that the Rogers problem with pouet.net has been resolved somehow, so you’re not going to have any problems accessing the page hopefully. Make sure you also check out other demos released in Breakpoint 08. Some of my favorites:
– Masagin by Farbrausch [This one is incredibly cute! =) ]
– Challenger Deep by Traction & Brainstorm [Extremely Beautiful]
– theBeauty by Einklang.net [Colourful demo]
– Linear by SQNY [Darn kool style]
– Concentrate by Adapt [Some very cool effects]
– Diego on e – Unfortunately I have no clue who made this [Very very colourful and pretty demo]
– 60 Seconds for Mr. Light by Anadune [Underrated unfortunately.. I found it absolutely adorable]
– Wild Demo: Craft by lft [Oh Jeez… this one is awesome in ways I can’t possibly explain!]

On a bit of a different topic, NVISION anyone? A couple of weeks ago I sent a whole load of information out about NVISION, for people who have left an email address with me to be kept in the loop with any demoscene related events. But so far no one has got back to me. Is there anybody who’s going? In case you’re wondering what this is about, check here. NVISION is a newly born demoparty which will be held in the San Jose, from 25th to 27th of August, and from what my understanding is, it’s going to be pretty darn cool. And yes it’s true, unfortunately I can’t go because at that point in time my plane will be going to the opposite direction. But you can be sure that I would go if I were to be around. So if you’re going, let me know. And if you’re not sure yet, well, just GO! =) Don’t miss this!

Update: ALSO ALSO… Jeez how could I forget to write this? The scene.org awards ceremony was also held during the Breakpoint, and you can find a complete list of winners here. Congratulations to ASD for winning the award for the best demo, as well as a couple of more categories. Make sure you check the winner for Breakthrough Performance too, it’s very cute. Sumotori Dreams by Archee.