http://www.nickology.com/index.php/site_moxblox/index/ Official Web Blog of Nicolas Jouannem (aka MortusMox or Nick) en nick@nickology.com Copyright 2008 2008-08-19T07:33:00+01:00 http://www.nickology.com/index.php/site_moxblox/comments/australian_town_mayor_pleads_for_ugly_women/ http://www.nickology.com/index.php/site_moxblox/australian_town_mayor_pleads_for_ugly_women/#When:06:33:00Z Interesting article on CNN that I thought I would share with you all… Mayor John Molony found himself under attack Monday over comments he made to a local newspaper that read: “May I suggest if there are five blokes to every girl, we should find out where there are beauty-disadvantaged women and ask them to proceed to Mount Isa.” The mayor added that many women who already live in the remote Queensland state town seem quite happy. “Quite often you will see walking down the street a lass who is not so attractive with a wide smile on her face,” he continued. “Whether it is recollection of something previous or anticipation for the next evening, there is a degree of happiness.” The quotes, published Saturday in the Townsville Bulletin, sparked outrage among the town’s female population, led to furious online debates and drew criticism from the local chamber of commerce. I find it incredible that a political figure would dare say such a thing! But I do thank him for an extraordinary sense of humor and the few laughs that he brought to my day… See the whole article on CNN: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/08/18/australia.ugly.women.ap/index.html Funny, News 2008-08-19T06:33:00+01:00 http://www.nickology.com/index.php/site_moxblox/comments/99999_i_am_rich_application_pulled_from_apples_app_store/ http://www.nickology.com/index.php/site_moxblox/99999_i_am_rich_application_pulled_from_apples_app_store/#When:12:32:00Z In what I beleive is a wrong decision, Apple has decided to take down a $999.99 applicaton created by Heinrich, a German fellow. The application which apparently does nothing but show a red background with a cube was pulled down but not before 8 people actually bought it! That’s $5,600 in net revenue for Heinrich (after Apple’s cut). [Apple gets the other 30%] It is not clear why the app was pulled off the store as it does not break any of the agreements between Heinrich and the conditions for selling an App. The irony would be if Apple decided to pull it off indefinitely and Heinrich sued Apple for another ridiciulous amount. The LA Times claims that perhaps this review for said application made Apple react : (I doubt it) : I saw this app with a few friends and we jokingly clicked ‘buy’ thinking it was a joke, to see what would happen. ... THIS IS NO JOKE...DO NOT BUY THIS APP AND APPLE PLEASE REMOVE THIS FROM THE APP STORE In any case, just like I mentioned in my rant against people complaining about the black markets evolving in WoW, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this app. If people were dumb enough to buy it. so be it. Besides… maybe they weren’t dumb. Maybe they were genuinely trying to prove that they were rich.  Funny, IT / Technology 2008-08-08T12:32:00+01:00 http://www.nickology.com/index.php/site_moxblox/comments/sarkozy_in_south_park/ http://www.nickology.com/index.php/site_moxblox/sarkozy_in_south_park/#When:19:49:00Z It’s the first time South Park depicts Sarkozy so it’s always a pleasure. Though the story of the episode revolved over Canada and how the world perceives it, some foreign presidents were given much speech time (Switzerland, Japan, Britain, and mostly France with Sarkozy). Below are some pics: Funny, Reviews, Series reviews 2008-04-04T19:49:00+01:00 http://www.nickology.com/index.php/site_moxblox/comments/iphone_firware_update_114/ http://www.nickology.com/index.php/site_moxblox/iphone_firware_update_114/#When:22:27:01Z It’s the end of February and Steve had promised us the iPhone SDK but didn’t deliver. In fact, rumors say that the March 6th event he has lined up will only be a breif announcement of a limited beta. Bummer. In any case, this Tuesday was very eventful at Apple. The MacBook and MacBook Pro were both updated, iTunes was updated, and a new iPhone firmware, 1.1.4 was released. This update was a pain to install! Downloading via iTunes was fine but the update failed 3 times before finally being applied. And once it was applied and I had shut off my machine, the phone locked itself and was deactivated. I had to turn everything back on to connect it to iTunes again after which it started working. Firmware updates have never gone very smoothly for me which I find strange. After all, I have never jail-breaked my phone or messed it up so I would expect it to be a smooth process. It never is. it’s gotten to the point where I wouldn’t recommend any update unless the person is a bit computer-savy. The latest firmware didn’t seem to bring anything new. Apple reports that they fixed bugs (which is good). And it seems like Safari keeps pages in cache longer than before. One of my general habits is to load a bunch of news websites via WiFi in the morning before I walk out so that I can have quick access to several news pages while I’m on the bus or in the metro. But usually, by the time I switch pages, the browser has cleared up the window and reloads it via Edge which is too slow to be acceptable for certain sites. Hopefully this fix will keep all pages in cache for a longer time. Other than this small thing, I haven’t noticed anything mind-boggling. If I do, or if I read about anything, I’ll share it here. I’m guessing this update was just in preparation for next week’s release. Perhaps we’ll be able to install an app after the keynote! (crossing fingers)   IT / Technology 2008-02-28T22:27:01+01:00 http://www.nickology.com/index.php/site_moxblox/comments/web_apple_ad/ http://www.nickology.com/index.php/site_moxblox/web_apple_ad/#When:09:22:00Z Funny, IT / Technology 2008-01-29T09:22:00+01:00 http://www.nickology.com/index.php/site_moxblox/comments/happy_new_year_and_iphone_bugs/ http://www.nickology.com/index.php/site_moxblox/happy_new_year_and_iphone_bugs/#When:15:05:01Z First of all, I would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year. Some great things are coming in 2008. Let’s get ready As is custom, I made and received quite a few calls around midnight. Having relatives in various places around the world, I was constantly using the iPhone Clock program to see what time it was in these different places. This is when I noticed a strange bug. To understand this bug, it is important to note that I am in Paris, thus with a GMT+1. As the image below shows, at 10:16pm, Paris-time, the label was “Today”. However, for Doha, which is 2 hours ahead of Paris, it was 12:16am of the 1st of January and yet the date was “07/12/31” which is off. The bug repeated itself AFTER midnight, Paris-time. This time, the Toronto time is a day off. Toronto, which is 6 hours behind Paris was displaying a date of “08/01/01”. Typically, the iPhone displays “Today” or “Yesterday” tags. But this time, it displayed incorrect dates even though it was aware of time zone. Although this is small glitch, I hope Apple fixes it in the next firmware update. Can anyone confirm this bug? Please do so in the comments or send pictures to nick@nickology.com. Update: The iPhone depicted above was bought and is running in France on the Orange network with firmware 1.1.2 (3B48b). IT / Technology 2008-01-02T15:05:01+01:00 http://www.nickology.com/index.php/site_moxblox/comments/unlocked_iphones_to_be_sold_in_france/ http://www.nickology.com/index.php/site_moxblox/unlocked_iphones_to_be_sold_in_france/#When:14:51:00Z According to Kevin J. O’Brien of the International Herald Tribune, Orange is expected to sell unlocked iPhones in November along-side exclusive Orange deals. The move, which ended a month of speculation, is a concession to a French law that forbids bundling the sale of a mobile phone and a mobile operator. Orange plans to sell both a version of the iPhone locked to its network in France for €399, or $560, and an unlocked version, which will cost more, an Orange spokeswoman, Béatrice Mandrine, said. I must admit that this move suprises me since there is a battle going on on one side of the planet to prevent unlocking of iPhones and at the same time, there will be a legally available unlocked iPhone. Sure, the price will probably be very high but still… Source: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/16/business/apple.php IT / Technology, News 2007-10-19T14:51:00+01:00 http://www.nickology.com/index.php/site_moxblox/comments/apples_new_keyboard_simply_awesome/ http://www.nickology.com/index.php/site_moxblox/apples_new_keyboard_simply_awesome/#When:19:27:00Z New Apple Keyboard Don’t get me wrong… Apple’s peripherals usually suck. The Mighty Mouse and the the slightly older version of the Mac keyboard are example of completely failed products (in my opinion). Currently, at work, I’m using the Apple keyboard that came with iMacs early 2006. (The white version with a raised back). This keyboard was nice for about a month… after which, it became visibly filthy from use and a year later (now) the keys resist being pressed so much that I actually feel like I’m wasting development time when I’m coding. This also introduces annoying typos that take even more time to detect. As for the Mighty Mouse… uhh!! It’s horrible! Although its functionality and design are nice, it simply breaks down way to often! Both my colleague and I have sent back our mice for an exchange about 9 months ago. A few weeks ago, my colleague opted for a new Logitech mouse as hers had given out already. Mine still works but I can’t scroll with it and sometimes the movement isn’t detected well. No really, a horrible mouse. Apple really needs to improve their external hardware and I think the new keyboard is a start. That being said, I recently acquired Apple’s latest keyboard for personal use. It’s slim, silver, with 2 high-speed USB ports and white keys. The keyboard also has built-in buttons for some of Mac OSX’s most common and used features and software (Dashboard, iTunes, Volume up/down, etc.). Although I used the keyboard for a few hours using a Mac, I’m primarily using it at home on my IBM laptop running Windows XP. I was thinking of getting the wireless bluetooth version of the keyboard but after some research on the net, the compatibility with Windows didn’t seem to be quite there. Officially, this keyboard does not support Windows at all. Unofficially, the full version of the keyboard works just fine with it. My experience in plugging it in was seamless; I simply connected the keyboard’s USB to my laptop and then, I did nothing. A few seconds later, the keyboard was detected and ready for use. I then ventured into plugging a wireless mouse into the left USB port of the keyboard and that also worked immediately! I was very happy by then. Though most of the keys were being recognized, including all the letters and numbers, some useful keys were not; such as the function keys, some number pad keys, etc. In order to fix this, I downloaded a neat little program called SharpKeys which allowed me to easily re-map the keys to functions that were already built into my system by other keyboard drivers. All in all, this is a nice keyboard. My old keyboard, a Wireless Microsoft Mouse+Keyboard set, still works fine and I have nothing to complain about it; except for its bulkiness. This new Apple Keyboard is a welcome change mostly due to its size and layout. Conclusion: Positive : The size, the faster and nicer typing, the quick acces keysNegative : I’m worried that they white keys will not stay “white” for more than a year. So… when can we expect a new mouse?    IT / Technology, Personal, Reviews 2007-10-14T19:27:00+01:00 http://www.nickology.com/index.php/site_moxblox/comments/awesome_video/ http://www.nickology.com/index.php/site_moxblox/awesome_video/#When:20:33:00Z Lee sent this over to me and I must say that I was stunned by the simple yet amazing content of this video (and I’m rarely stunned...) Feel free to share the link! Blogging 2007-09-26T20:33:00+01:00 http://www.nickology.com/index.php/site_moxblox/comments/safe_driving_in_canada/ http://www.nickology.com/index.php/site_moxblox/safe_driving_in_canada/#When:09:04:00Z During my last day in Toronto, I halted to a traffic light with this bin next to me: I found that to be pretty amusing It’s too bad that some didn’t understand that this was a “don’t do” ad… Quite frankly, I’m surprisded they’re allowed to talk at all on the phone while driving in the States and Canada. Funny 2007-08-06T09:04:00+01:00