Warning: Use of undefined constant user_level - assumed 'user_level' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in /home/xdsse/public_html/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-google-analytics/ultimate_ga.php on line 524

Hi, I am Martin.

This is my blog on mainly technology, entrepreneurship and design. Links about just about anything comes through now and then though. I also run a site on photography called Digital Photo Guide! If you are into photography, why not check that out?

Go to digitalphotoguide.net

Lifehack

No more tears from cutting that onion

by  •  • 0 Comments


Warning: Use of undefined constant user_level - assumed 'user_level' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in /home/xdsse/public_html/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-google-analytics/ultimate_ga.php on line 524

Onions is both a source of great flavour and healthy contents for our body. For quite allot of people the handling of these beautiful vegetables is a pain though due to the burning sensation they might cause on the eyes. So is there actually a way of stopping your eyes from burning while chopping onions? I though I’d put some time and effort in using ye old friend – Internet, so see if there is any ways out there which do the trick. For simplicity I collected a bunch and created a list of my findings for easy access.

  • Icy water – Start by filling a container with ice and cold water. Cut the onion in two parts and let both parts lay in the icy water for a few minutes and then do what you need to do with them.
  • Flowing water – Chop your onion next to the flowing stream of water from the water-tap.
  • Boiling water – Chop your onion next to the flowing stream of water steam from a pot of boiling water.
  • Freezer – Put the onion in the freezer for five or ten minutes and then take it out and cut directly.
  • Shaper knife – By using a sharper knife you minimze the cells being crushed when cutting the onion.
  • And of course for a last resort, put on your scuba-gear and cut that onion away like there was no tomorrow.

If you ever wondered why it is that the onions do irritate your eyes by the way it is due to the enzymes released when you collapse the cells of the onion. These enzymes react with the rest of the onion and release a gas that together with water becomes an acid. And due to the fact our eyes is watery, the gas when it reaches our eyes become acid and the eyes begin to get irritated. This is why a pair of swim-goggles or scuba-gear will prevent your eyes from burning.

Technology

3d movies at home

by  •  • 0 Comments


Warning: Use of undefined constant user_level - assumed 'user_level' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in /home/xdsse/public_html/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-google-analytics/ultimate_ga.php on line 524

For quite a while now the cinemas have been pushing 3D-movies again. I remember when I was a child and 3D-glasses were shipped with comic books and I sat and watched images with these really bad glasses made of paper and plastic-film and I was amazed on how cool it was. So when I read about 3D-movie on the rise I was really on my feet and eagerly awaited to see my first movie in full 3D. The though actually did slip my mind; How can this fail?

So last weekend I were down at one of the local video-rentals and rented a movie to be seen at home – in 3D! The movie was “The journey to the center of the earth“, the re-make which included glasses for all who were to see it. I remembered these bad glasses in paper from my childhood and though that I would get something better. But when I opened up the case they met my eyes once again. Those lousy paper-goggles was there and mocked my enthusiasm as if they knew I had high hopes.

After my first disappointment I started to watch the movie. And *BAM* there was the second disappointment right in my face. The actual color of the glasses in the box was not balanced at all and the green one (for my left eye) was really do strong which made everything in the entire movie to come out in a green soft light. Everything. Green.

About two hours later the movie ended and my eyes was totally destroyed by the colors and I didn’t manage to see a complete color scale until the day after. So, there you have it – my first experience with movies in 3D. If if had not been for the really bad glasses I think it would be really neat. But as of now, they did ruin it all by shipping the movie with the worst kind of budget solution in a long time.

I think I have to see a movie at the cinema before I can really bury this entire idea because the effect of things flying against you is really interesting and if there exist glasses which makes the colors come out flawless I really do think it will be great. So to sum up I must say that movies in 3D will be awesome, if they do fix the really bad glasses once and for all.

Technology

Face-taging now also in Flickr

by  •  • 0 Comments


Warning: Use of undefined constant user_level - assumed 'user_level' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in /home/xdsse/public_html/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-google-analytics/ultimate_ga.php on line 524

I started using Flickr as the service where I show off my photos not too long ago. I liked the simplicity of it and the ability to integrate the photos into my site without any problems. Feature-wise Flickr is minimalistic at first but the more one work with the service, the more one find that can be done to organize and show off your work in a good way. And now it got just a bit better.

Face taged in photo and also a small list of persons above the tags in the lower right part.

Face taged in photo and also a small list of persons above the tags in the lower right part.

Face-taging in Flickr is just as simple as adding a regular tag, and to be completly honest they are almost the same thing. What do differ a face-tag from a regular tag is that faces are beeing organized and linked to profiles which makes it possible to also list pictures of specific people. You will also be notified when someone tag your face in a photo and you have the ability to remove all tags for yourself in all photos at Flickr if you identify that they are beeing missused. It is also configurable wheter it should be possible to tag your face in photos and who should be able to do so.

Add face-tag

Adding a face-tag is just as adding a regular tag.

All in all this was a nice new feature which is not very new or inovative but still good to have in a otherwise very good photo-sharing site. Keep the good things coming Flickr!

Resources:
http://blog.flickr.net/en/2009/10/21/people-in-photos/
http://www.flickr.com/help/people/

Technology

Would you give a stranger your birthdate?

by  •  • 0 Comments


Warning: Use of undefined constant user_level - assumed 'user_level' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in /home/xdsse/public_html/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-google-analytics/ultimate_ga.php on line 524

Last week there was something called the ‘National Identity Fraud Prevention Week’ in the UK. One of the biggest goals of this themed week was to make people aware on how easy it is to get your identity stolen if you spread your personal information around you to strangers. One of the writers over at Techradar went out on the street asking people for their information to see if people would give them right away or if they actually would hesitate due to the fact he was a complete stranger.

As you may already guessed people gave their information away without a thought on why. And the most disturbing part of it all was that two minutes later (after they just gave their information) whether they would give their information up to a complete stranger most of them said no. And I think that the real problem resides just there. People know that the problem exist but they refuse to see that it might happen to them.

To steal an identity today might cause even more pain and distress then to do an actual burglary. If someone was to hijack your electronic profile they can both get you into very hard financial problems as well as destroying your social life. By spreading propaganda or other abusive information they can hurt the image of you for a very long time ahead. This is a hard fact which we can not discard. But instead of just being scared and avoid or abandon you electronic identity you can always instead do your best to keep it safe.

Just some week ago there was 10’000 user passwords that leaked from Hotmail and it was first mentioned as a security breach but later revised. As it was explained later was that the passwords had been sent by the users themselves answering a phony mail asking them to send in their passwords. Once again, most people know that they should never ever send a password to anyone asking for it – but nothing will happen to me.

Out of the 10’000 passwords leaked from Hotmail-users the most used password was ‘123456’. Second most used was ‘123456789’. If you have anyone of these as a password to anything at all, you better go and change it right now. Choose passwords which you can remember and try to make them more complex then just numbers or just letters. Use the opportunity to be creative!

And while your at it, never use the same password for everything you can find. It is even better to keep different passwords and storing them in a log at home or somewhere you feel is ‘safe’ if you were to forget any passwords.

Resources:
http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/caught-on-video-brits-handing-their-identities-to-complete-strangers-643548?src=rss&attr=all
http://www.acunetix.com/blog/websecuritynews/statistics-from-10000-leaked-hotmail-passwords/
http://www.stop-idfraud.co.uk/

Random

A first glance at Geocaching

by  •  • 0 Comments


Warning: Use of undefined constant user_level - assumed 'user_level' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in /home/xdsse/public_html/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-google-analytics/ultimate_ga.php on line 524

Haven’t we all since we were children dreamt of finding a treasure just as in the tales? Something tells me that this is exactly the feeling people doing geocaching is feeling once again in their lives. And that was really the feeling I had when I went out last night with my trustworthy iPhone looking for my first hidden treasure in a game which is growing ever stronger right not – Geocaching! For people who never heard of this I will give a quick rundown on how it all works.

Geocaching is what one would call a game or a sport where people all over the world is looking for hidden treasures, here called caches, using map, problem-solving and a GPS-unit. First of all the people looking for the caches go to geocaching.com and can search for caches in their own vicinity. Taking down the coordinates to the cache or a place nearby and then head out to find it! Some caches are easy to find and it is just to go to the given coordinates while other is more complex to find and you need to solve problems and even triangulate new coordinates using riddles and math-problems. All caches contain a log-book in which finders can write a small note to other finders or just to claim their find. But in some caches there is also things to barter with. The rule that apply to the things in a cache is that if you take something out, you must put something back in. And the content can be really just about anything

So who did hide these caches from the very beginning you may ask? Well this is the complete beauty of it all. Everyone can create a cache and just log it at the website making it available for other people to find! some caches are big and other is small. The more one look for them the more you can find, some caches is shown right out in the public but invisible when you are not looking for them. After you start being a geocacher you quite fast have to take nothing for granted. Things can be hidden everywhere!

Equipment needed to start geocaching is really nothing at all. You can look up caches at home, mark them on a map and go out looking without nothing else. What really makes this easier though is if you have a portable GPS-unit which you can bring. Nowadays when GPS is something built in to ever more mobile phones this makes geocaching more available to the public then ever! What I quickly learned was to create a small kit you can bring when hunting for caches. The kit can be a couple of pens so that you can enter the log of a cache even if the original pens is gone (or in some caches the pen just wont fit), some things to trade if you find something in a cache you want to keep and an electronic map and preferably a GPS.

I found my first cache yesterday and was out today as well and found my second cache which was located very near my home! So if you feel this sound interesting, go to geocaching.com and search for caches near your home. Perhaps you find just as I that I pass by small hidden treasures everyday. Not until now I knew about them and now I can’t stop looking for new ones.

Reflection

Goodbye and thank you for the fish

by  •  • 0 Comments


Warning: Use of undefined constant user_level - assumed 'user_level' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in /home/xdsse/public_html/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-google-analytics/ultimate_ga.php on line 524

This is the question one undoubtedly ask after reading about the movie ‘The End of the Line‘ which have is premiere this coming Monday. The movie is a actually a documentary on how we and our fellow humans evolved our methods of bringing fish and shellfish out of the oceans in the most cost-effective way, no matter the ecological impact on the world from which we borrow some time.

According to WWF the global fishing fleets is about 250% larger then the oceans can sustainably support and for a bystander, these numbers seem to tell us something. If we take out more then what can grow back from the oceans, will they actually run out?

“Can the sea really let us eat sushi in these numbers?” — Caroline Bennett, Founder, Moshi Moshi sushi chain

Oceans are vast and huge and seem to hold an unlimited amount of life but the fact is that they are limited. There is a set amount of live fish in the oceans at every given moment in time. Based on this number there is a set number of fish that can be reproduced each year. This is quite basic facts which most people agree on.

In a time where a growing number of people is in starvation and we have a financial problem on our hands we need to start looking on what the impact will be of our decisions. As of today we have have an enormous waste in our fishing fleets trying to find premium animals. While fishing tuna with long lines we get turtles, birds and sharks as waste. While fishing cod using trawl we get everything coming in our way together with the cod. All this so called waste is just dumped back into the ocean as garbage when it actually is a surplus of the oceans total amount of life which we just kill and drop back. The oceans can of course handle decomposing live matter as it is a part of the natural way but in the same time it can not handle tons after tons of the same fish killed and dumped right back. Species will become extinct, and they will become extinct soon.

This dumping of unwanted fish is never the less the only problem we have today. The greatest error of them all is that if we sum up what we take out of the waters it exceeds what can be reproduced. We are killing the oceans, and doing it fast and industrious.

“It is true that fishermen feel an almost desperate need to catch as many fish as they can when they’re allowed to. That sense of desperation … can’t be an excuse for the policymakers of the world and this country to allow that to cause the universal collapse of fisheries.” — James Greenwood, former US Congressman

More information

So what can be done to halt this spiral of doom which we spin around in every day of our lives? As almost always when it come to ecology and people, all we have to do is become aware and to use our power as consumers. Avoid buying fish that is on the verge of being extinct and ask questions and raise the topic. And as always, if you can buy food produced nearby, it most likely is a good option.

Consumers have the power to change the market, we all just have to start asking questions.


Warning: Use of undefined constant user_level - assumed 'user_level' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in /home/xdsse/public_html/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-google-analytics/ultimate_ga.php on line 524

Warning: Use of undefined constant user_level - assumed 'user_level' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in /home/xdsse/public_html/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-google-analytics/ultimate_ga.php on line 524