Category: Geek Stuff

Delicious Library — WOW!

Delicious Library logo I have read about Delicious Library at quite a few places. But I never really thought much of it. So last night, I decided to kick the tires at this award-winning software…. Boy, was I blown away or what!!

Once you use one of the three methods (Title, Author, ISBN) to search for your item (books, DVDs, CDs and games), the result is returned fairly quickly from Amazon.com’s database (needless to say, you need to be connected to the Internet to use this).

But there are still things I was annoyed at:

  • It only searches at Amazon’s database: I had some books that showed up only at Barns and Noble but not at Amazon. So I ended up having to hand code those. I also had to borrow pictures of some books from BN.com from time to time.
  • It gets confused on locale: Sometimes it returns results from Amazon UK or Amazon France when the book was clearly available in Amazon’s US site
  • Because it only looks at Amazon’s database, you can forget about foreign titles. All the books I got in Chinese (or even English titles from Singapore, Hong Kong or Australia) don’t show up even thought the ISBNs are valid.
  • The damn interface doesn’t scroll with the mouse. Using the scroll bar becomes a hassle when you have 100 items to enter

But the software was amazing overall. I spent about an hour and a half entering everything I own (less games and CDs) into its database. Despite its shortcomings, this thing is great. I can now keep track of who’d borrowed my books and DVDs!!

And damn it, I own 100+ books. I thought I’d shed most of them with all the moves I’ve had!

UPDATE: The comment Jeff made got me interested in finding out what else’s out there. Booxter from Deep Prose Software makes book entry WAY easier than Delicious Library. But it does require that I am on Amazon’s site as well. Too bad it doesn’t support DVD collections (or does it?).

More WP Plugins

Installed Jon Abad‘s great LiveCalendar which puts Ajax (combination of XMLHTTPRequest and Javascript) to good use.

The downside is, the Coloured Calendar doesn’t work with LiveCalendar 1.6. I did get colors to work, but they won’t stick because of Ajax’s realtime data updating.

Anyone got any success out of this?

Self-healing Genes — Tomorrow’s Science, Today

I realize something crazy like this is going to happen sooner or later, but I am completely unprepared for this news reported by Wired (Giving Genetic Disease the Finger):

Scientists are closing in on techniques that could let them safely repair almost any defective gene in a patient, opening the door for the first time to treatments for a range of genetic disorders that are now considered incurable.
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“This doesn’t just deliver a foreign gene into the cell,” said Nobel Prize winner and CalTech President David Baltimore, who with a Sangamo paper co-author Mathew Porteus proposed this method to cure genetic diseases. “It actually deletes the miscoded portion and fixes the problem.”

Modern science has prolonged life, now it’s going to extend life beyond the scope of human’s natural normality to live. But then, it’s not all happy news. Scientists caught some side-affects early on:

One trial that did succeed, but then ended in tragedy, was a 2002 French X-linked SCID trial that used retroviruses to deliver a new gene into the patients. The new gene cured the disease in 12 patients, but went on to cause leukemia in three of them. It turned out the foreign gene, in addition to producing the protein that vanquishes X-linked SCID, had the unexpected side effect of sometimes turning on a cancer-causing gene.

But the latest technique from CalTech supposedly fixed that problem. Long term effects are never easy to assess: Who knows what this new method will cause over a person’s life time, or worst, passing the problematic gene in question to the future generations. Talk about home-made genetic mutations!

Tiger-like Search Box

Took sometime to fiddle with the Search Box today to make it look like this:
My search box screenshot

Much to my dismay, this elegant look only works under Safari. Under any other browser, it’d look like any normal search box.

This All the other browsers blows!

Apple has an elegant solution at its Dashboard Widgets download site (upper right hand corner). But it involves image alignments… And I don’t really want mine to look like this:
Apple's search box screen shot
(this was happened in Firefox after a search result was returned)

GizmoProject — Threat to Skype?

ProjectGizmo Logo
While hopping about the Internet, some people said GizmoProject is to be a good contender to Skype‘s world domination plan.

Given that it supports as many platforms (less Windows CE, which nobody really cares anyway) as Skype (and is already available for Mac OSX), it’s probably the most attractively designed VoIP client based on the SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) technology, which is pretty much the standard in the VoIP industry. Skype uses its own proprietary protocol; and seeing how successful Skype is in the market, there’s no reason to believe Skype will provide its API to developers anytime soon.

However, since nobody is using this yet, I will hold out until enough people bug me to install it.

ProjectGizmo call-out screenshot

Easy WordPress Administration

Thanks to Sebastian‘s recommendation, I installed WP Tiger Administration by Steve Smith today.

WordPress Tiger Administration screenshot

Life couldn’t have been better. WordPress should probably make WP Tiger Administration the standard WP dashboard panel for all future installations. The usability and ease of use have increased tremendously with this plugin; it actually makes WordPress administration fun! The interface looks so good that I want to spend more time there!

I no longer see any reason in using anything else. Damn it, I love Apple-inspired products!

Be a Blog Author Using Your Mac

PCWorld has a nice article (Mac Skeptic: Be a Blog Author) on various different applications available to post stuff to your own blog. The author compared the big four:

She ended up picking Ecto as her top choice, which is what I would have chosen given that it packs more useful features than the other ones. What’s especially nice is its integration to iPhoto. But I see the apps as something I’d use when I don’t have Internet access. Otherwise, using WordPress’ interface is still my weapon of choice.

UPDATE: Based on the recommendation made in the comment, I installed the WP Tiger Administration plugin (FREE). See my entry about the plugin here.

“Hitchhiker’s Guide” Could Have Been More

Nice movie; but the plot and character developments need work.

Hitchhiker's Guide logo We went to see The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, adopted from a book by Douglas Adams by the same title, at the dollar theatre on Tuesday (well, as close to “dollar” as we can get around here).

The story was a bit on the dry side (Grace fell asleep a couple of times at the funniest moments) though there were lots of actions and subtle British humor sprinkled all over the movie. One doesn’t have to have read the book to appreciate the story development though there were still much to be desired, such as character development.

That said, a geek can’t call himself a geek until he’s read the book. If you haven’t already, you can catch up by downloading the trilogy here (PDF 2.3MB). But if you are REALLY lazy and just want to get the gist of it, download and read A Guide to The Hitchhiker%u2019s Guide to the Galaxy (PDF 68KB) instead (you poser).