Mike`s Blog - Selfmade

Patching Miranda to disallow version requests

info@mhaller.de (Mike Haller) — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 01:48:18 +0200

Miranda is a well-known and open source instant messenger. It includes support for Jabber, which basically uses the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). The XML-based protocol allows servers to request certain information from clients.

Sometimes, it is advisable to disallow software to automatically and quietly communicate and reveal certain information to others.

One of those questionable requests is used to gather information about the client software name, version and operating system (e.g. what would be called User-Agent in HTTP).

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Wild Boar Roast

info@mhaller.de (Mike Haller) — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 17:45:34 +0200

How to make a wild pig roast

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webstats

info@mhaller.de (Mike Haller) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 23:01:00 +0200

My web site statistics show that

17% of my visitors are looking for Lemmings for iPhone, which unfortunately does not exist. If i'd know how to develop for the iPhone, i'd be rich by now by selling the game here.

10% use a Mac, 6% Linux, 10% Safari, 48% Firefox, 25% MSIE, 2% Opera, 1% iPhone

6% are looking for information about how to publish a Spring WebService

4% try to find a way to beat the end-level of Defense Grid: The Awakening

1% are looking for a XPS2PDF Converter, which, like the iPhone Lemmings, does not exist. Anyone want to join and develop such a converter tool?

The other search-engine driven visitors usually look for the following tags:
spring ibatis wsdl eclipse oracle hsqldb batch java heap dump flash squirrel osgi saferpay virtuemart mock tomcat pom.xml obfuscator jmx jboss easymock etc.

All other visitors use direct links or newsreaders (approx. 200 visits/day, although I think most of them are some kind of automated web crawlers)

The funniest thing to look for is certainly "messagesucker". It appears 15 times in the logfiles.

Dynamic Applications

info@mhaller.de (Mike Haller) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:15:00 +0100

What are Dynamic Applications?

It's the software-way of putting the business people back in charge. Today, changes to enterprise business software takes ages to get into production. Endless analyze-redesign-implement-test-deploy cycles affecting multiple stakeholders: IT, QA, vendors and of course the sponsor.

How would it feel if the first three stakeholders could be removed from the process, once the application has been finalized in its initial state? How about giving the sponsor or business department the ability to adapt and change applications on their own? How about giving them the ability to change complex business logic, fine-tune parameters and model work flow to reflect the reality when and as soon as it changes?

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Blender Wormhole

info@mhaller.de (Mike Haller) — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 05:40:06 +0100

A railroad wormhole journey made with Blender in 1h modelling and 2hrs rendering on AMD 3500+:

Download MPEG-4 .avi
Includes 4x oversampling for anti-aliasing and motion blur effect, which takes some additional CPU resources.

Blender Skybeam effect

info@mhaller.de (Mike Haller) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 08:23:21 +0100

Playing around with Blender again. Wanted to try out how "visible" light can be made. I hoped that'd be as easy as switching on the Mist button, but unfortunately it was not so easy. However, after a couple of trial and errors, i finally found the Halo button on the lamp object, which is pretty much what I was looking for to get that noir-stylish Batman Skybeam effect.

Added a filled bezier curve object targeted by a spot light. The object has a Cloud texture to increase the fog effect. Duplicated that object's curve path and gave the second object a Halo effect itself, so it shines a little bit around the edges. For the background, I used a very large plane with the same Cloud procedural texture and using Alpha as the Map To parameter, so the stars shine through. For the city skyline, i copied a few plain cubes and resized them individually on their Y axis. Kept the color very dark, so you don't see all the glitches.

This is how the Blender Desktop looks like:

My tandoori experience

info@mhaller.de (Mike Haller) — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 18:32:05 +0100

On friday, I visited an english food store located in the city of Zug, Switzerland, where I'm currently working.

There, I bought Patak's Tandoori Curry Paste with Tamarind and Ginger. After reading the recipe, I started to merge all the required ingredients into a bowl:
- Yogurt (500g)
- Tandoori Curry Paste (two table spoons)
- Chicken (cut into dices)
- Oil

Now, i'm waiting for it to marinate until tomorrow. Then, it will be cooked until no liquid is left or it gets creamy enough.