None of them did. Until we found this thingie. It’s a Pretec i-Disk Diamond 21.0mm long, 11.9mm wide, 1.9 mm thick and weighing only 1g. A definite wow, of course. I immediately looked for a local reseller and ordered one, even if the maximum capacity I could find was 256MB (I reckon that should suffice, for the time being).

So, right now, I’m holding a little jewel in my hands. It’s extremely small, although some might argue that losing it gets easier once size decreases; but what the hell, I’ve always been a fan of miniatures of every kind. I totally love the tiny strap and the little protective cover it has, but the one thing that has really taken me aback was the earring support that comes along.

Needless to say, even if initially I wanted to buy it for Mom, I am definitely going to keep it for myself.

Sooo… meet the “translated” Foxkeh, the blog featuring the Firefox mascot made by the Japanese fans out there.

Last September Foxkeh was born and we collected ideas for his name from over 7,000 community members. He was named Foxkeh after FIREFOX and SUKE, the suffix of common boys’ name in Japan.

In the Downloads section, you’ll be able to find neat illustration of the history of Firefox, wallpapers and other lovely images with Foxkeh.

The official release date for Europe has been scheduled for May 2007, while the US and other parts of the world will follow in the second and third quarters of the year.

In other related news – Within Temptation have just released their new album, “The Heart of Everything”, which includes “The Howling”, their TCoS-related song. Here comes the nice part, quoting the latest Spellborn newsletter: the album features the “Open Disc” system which gives you exclusive access to a special website filled with Within Temptation and Spellborn goodies.

Aside from those, I started gathering some ideas for a new header image, to replace the old cropped photo I’ve had there since 2005. As I had previously said, I really needed a fresh look, something light and simple. No more plain photos or bloated images, but something neat, preferably vector art and not very complicated or fancy. For that, I’ve spent quite a few days lately trying to learn all that I could regarding the use of Inkscape, a delicious open source vector graphics editor that I simply fell inlove with.

So don’t just complain you don’t like the new looks. If you do want to help somehow, try instead to offer alternatives, constructive criticism and the likes. The main theme of the image will be some sort of a spiral, nevertheless; but any variations and related ideas are more than welcome and much appreciated.

I hope I managed to fix the databases, so everything should work smooth now. But if you do notice any invalid links or anything wrong otherwise, please notice me.

The other address will be redirecting here for a while longer, although I do not know exactly until when.

Anyway, thank you for keeping close.

And since they somehow managed to get past the pretty cool “Did You Pass Math?” plugin, I eventually decided to install the famous Akismet anti-spam plugin as well. The main reason why I hadn’t done this before was because it requires users to register on the Wordpress website in order to get an activation code that will allow them to actually use the plugin.

Well, I eventually did that, too. Another account on another website, thank whoever (also replaceable with “developers, developers, developers…” :D) browsers nowadays have password saving facilities included, I’d hate to have to remember all these more or less useless passwords.

Right now I really want to see if it was worth it, although I never saw anyone saying that they’re not happy with the plugin.

I still don’t like the new skin and the themes I used, along with one or two extensions I need, are still not working – but otherwise everything is nice and smooth. Aside from the already known features with anti-phishing, spell checking, search engine management &such, they also fixed a series of more or less annoying speed issues, bugs and crashes (both from previous Release Candidates and from the Firefox 1.5.* versions).

More details are available in the Release Notes.

And go go download.

After a quick visit at the secretary’s office who directed us to where we were supposed to actually go and a few minutes of wandering through the corridors of the uni in search of those rooms, we managed to get to the IT department – which had a big “Access Denied” sign on the door. Okay, let’s go in and ask.

So we entered a quite weird room, with several sexy computers, and headed to the guy who said he handles the CISCO issues, as well as the MSDNAA ones. Between two phone calls, a teacher horrified by the sight of a lab with only German-or-whatever-like keyboards (those with three symbols on the keys) and me barely trying not to smile in a too noticeable way at the sight of the “ladies” he had posted near his desk, we managed to get those MSDNAA accounts and pointed out to the first floor, where we were supposed to get more details about the CISCO classes. Note to self here: try using only one e-mail address and remember it correctly.

We then went to the third floor, to the Foreign Languages Department and see if we could find anyone who could tell us more about the Japanese classes. It took a little longer to roam the twisted corridors of the uni this time, but we eventually emerged victorious and found a really nice teacher or dean or …whatever he was who gave us more information (370RON/year, anyone interested can come and sign up, btw) and told us that, because some groups have already started the course, we’d have to wait until December and get assigned to a new group then. We left some phone numbers, an older student who had already taken those courses wished us luck (yes, I, for one, will sure need it :D) and off we went to complete the CISCO quest.

Obviously, we failed to find the place where we had been directed to and we were rather bored and tired by then, so we said we’ll leave it for another time, especially since we had been told that we’d only start in mid November, most likely, if we decided to sign up.

Oh, and I got a sexy red cover for the notebook where I’m supposed to keep track of the students who come at the classes and those who don’t. At least it will make my task more …colourfully pleasant.

And now, I’m off to start learning hardware stuff for the project I have to present in a few days. The horror.

I’ve just read a pretty interesting article in eWeek about “10 Programming Languages You Should Learn Right Now” (via OSNews). It may not offer a lot of insight for those already in the business, but for someone who’s looking for a few directions and some places where to start, it may prove quite useful.

Worth reading.

Gab: Hmm, I don’t even know where to begin; to learn PHP I need to know a lot of other things.
Gab: I should bug coditza.

Jim: If you want to learn, you should.
Jim: And there are lots of tutorials, as well.

Gab: Yeah, well, I was checking the one on W3 Schools now.
Gab: But that wouldn’t be enough, anyway.
Gab: And besides, I need to install stuff, test, touch and see for myself.

Jim: Obviously.
Jim: And you’d want somebody to teach you while you’re sleeping.

Gab: Precisely!

Well, regardless of the final decision, at least I’ll read and maybe even learn a bit from the tutorial I’ve mentioned there.