So, hello again!

After a long time here comes another post on this lonely blog, and I kind of thought about rere(re)*re-starting to write more regularly, maybe complain about the world, so I don’t bother people that don’t care directly and give the chance to comment my thoughts to other haters like me. Or something. I think I am becoming stupid and don’t know how to write in English any more so excuse me for my mistakes.

And maybe it is time for a redesign and a separate domain as I see some of the posts are still being read quite a lot and maybe it would help grabbing a nice name somehow related to me or something. Maybe my name + surname to show off a little bit? Why am I still writing this?

Anyway, as the post title is suggesting I am on G+ and can invite you, in case you still didn’t manage to join us 31337 h4x9rz (it is still closed right? I don’t even know that). Post a comment or send me an email (via the about.me page) with your mail so I can invite you.

So that was it for now, I could write something about Windows 8 or my new Samsung Omnia 7 (running the beta Windows 7.5 Mango release) but I guess I will do it tomorrow.

Have a great day!

PS: feel free to check my about.me page. It is kind of lame but who cares right? I am lame.
PPS: happy wifi day! (8.02.11 for American date style)

Hello reader!

The qwiki.com decided to add an invite your friends feature to the site and since I’m an alpha tester, I now have the chance to invite my friends. If you don’t know what qwiki is, let me just tell you that this project might have a cool future. It’s basically a search engine but everything you search is pictures + audio instead of the common text form. They won at TechCrunch Disrupt and their mission is:

to forever improve the way people experience information

Check the site at http://qwiki.com,

So Invites are available, if anyone would like one just write a comment (with your real email as I can invite you only via email).

I recently bought a new phone, the Samsung Galaxy 5 (i5500) with Android 2.1 on it and I must say I love this operating system, it is amazing! I wish I had the money for something better like the HTC Desire or Samsung Galaxy S.. maybe some day.

Anyway, if you are like me and don’t have the money to buy an expensive HTC (I know there are cheap ones, don’t bug me) but still like their user interface, here is something you can do.

1. Download Fancy Widget. It adds the nice clock + weather widget (present in the Sense UI) to your home screen. It is actually a widget that was available in the Android Market but had to be removed because HTC didn’t like the design which was basically the same as their own interface. The main difference between the two is that this widget is not animated. Notice that the link I gave you is from 4shared. The file works, I installed it. You download it, copy it to your sd card, use the My Files app (or whatever app you use for directory browsing), click on the file and install it. More mirrors (I think this is the latest update available).

If you would like to have this widget on your computer you can download HTCHome, which is a “widget that shows nice animated clock with weather like on HTC phones. It’s written in C# + WPF in Visual Studio 2010.”

2. Install LauncherPro from the Market. It changes the home screen and adds this:

to your phone. You will be able to see up to 7 desktops on a single screen, much like on the Sense UI (the pinch obviously won’t work, you will have to press a key of your choice). It also changes the 3 dock icons, giving you the possibility to add shortcuts to 15 applications of your choice. And with LauncherPro Plus (which costs $2,99) you can add some pretty usefull widgets, like a big calendar, a friend feed, messages and so on. Check the official site for detailed information.

There you go, a function that will generate a QR Code with the help of a function hosted on the Google API servor.

function generate_qr($url, $size ='150', $imgsize = false, $EC_level='L', $margin='0') {
    $url = urlencode($url);
    return '<img src="http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs='.$size.'x'.$size.&cht=qr&chld='.$EC_level.'|'.$margin.'&chl='.$url.'" alt="QR code" width="'.($imgsize ? $imgsize : $size).'" height="'.($imgsize ? $imgsize : $size).'" />';
}

You call it like this:

<?php echo generate_qr('http://blog.zurka.us'); ?>

And get something like this:

Try pointing your favorite code reader at it!

PS: I just noticed that it doesn’t work well because of the dark background, try it here.

Sorry for not writing a lot lately but I don’t have time.

So here it is, the solution to almost of your problems with your banned xbox360! A very simple way to unblock the hard disk and use your xbox360 for whatever thing you’d like, EXCEPT for xbox live.

The solution came from microsoft itself and it’s actually a dashboard update, so you can be sure it works (I tested it myself and it works like a charm!). And one more thing, after updating you will be able to use your usb sticks as memory for your xbox. It will support up to 2 * 16gb usb sticks.

So, what to do? It’s easy:

1. download the update
2. extract the content into the root of your usb stick (or burn a dvd dl) – do not modify the directory tree, just copy the content into the root (it should be a map called something like $SystemUpdate)
3. restart your console
4. you should get a popup asking if you want to update, click yes
5. wait a couple of seconds and your console should reboot
6. that’s it!

This is it, six simple steps to using your console once more!

Remember: you still won’t have access to XBOX LIVE!

Windows 7′s GodMode is actually a shortcut to accessing the operating system’s various control settings.

Although its name suggests perhaps even grander capabilities, Windows enthusiasts are excited over the discovery of a hidden “GodMode” feature that lets users access all of the operating system’s control panels from within a single folder.
By creating a new folder in Windows 7 and renaming it with a certain text string at the end, users are able to have a single place to do everything from changing the look of the mouse pointer to making a new hard-drive partition.
The trick is also said to work in Windows Vista, although some are warning that although it works fine in 32-bit versions of Vista, it can cause 64-bit versions of that operating system to crash.

To enter “GodMode,” one need only create a new folder and then rename the folder to the following:

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Once that is done, the folder’s icon will change to resemble a control panel and will contain dozens of control options.

Have spare time? Want to lose some of it?

Check out this link and learn what is the best use for browser popups.. a nice game of Pong!

Play pong with your browser and remember to turn popups on

I have 6 3 Google Wave invites!

If you want one, all you have to do is send me a postcard and I will invite you right away

Happy Waving!

So, after getting a Google Wave dev preview account, I also got a Google Voice invitation, which I quickly used and got myself a nice Google number: +1 (909) 20 NASAL (+1 (909) 206-2725).

Since I’m not American and Voice is only open to US citizen, I had some fun managing to get one, since they are only giving away US numbers for now and to create an account I had to add at least one phone number and it had to be US because the number has to be verified in order to have your account created.

So how did I do it? Let’s see.

1. Get Hotspot Shield: this is a free VPN connection that will give you an US ip address and make Google Think you are an US resident. You could use a proxy but I didn’t manage to find a working one so VPN was my next choice.

2. Get a free US phone number: Sipgate is your solution. In this case I signed up at sipgate.com instead of choosing sipgate.co.uk or any other variant, since you get a local phone number and I needed an american one. So sign up there, it’s free. You get to choose your own phone number. Do it, configure your cellphone and you’re done. If you get Registration failed, try this out.

3. Activate your Google Voice account by adding your new Sipgate phone number and verifying it.

That’s it, you’re done!

I have been accepted into the Google Wave beta testing. I feel so cool OMG

I also got a shiny new 25gb email account, @wavesandbox.com, oh, so cool!

[wave id="YPlHGxn2%A"]