Copy - Paste Blues

Another collegue of mine alerted me to another interesting quirk concerning the windows clipboard: the way text is copied into it, is dependant on the current language setting.

Let me explain:
If you ever tried copy-pasting greek text into Microsoft Word and came out as gibberish, there is a solution. Just switch to greek (usually left alt+ left shift) and try copy-pasting again. Greek will appear correctly this time...

Control+C in System Dialogs

After nearly 10 years of using windows, a collegue of mine introduced me to a little secret knowledge that I couldn't believe I had passed by...
When a system dialog pops up (the ones with a message and an ok/cancel button)
you can press Control+C and copy their FULL contents (title, message and button text) to the clipboard as text... go figure...
This one is gonna save me a lot of time...

Eurotrip

I never thought I'd be writting about a teen movie, but this one was really funny. Great cameo appearances by Matt Damon, Vinnie Jones, Lucy Lawless and others. Great soundtrack with Scotty Doesn't Know and Morning Train being the most catchy...
Check it out...

5Nov@Figaro - Revisited

I just posted an updated version of the Figaro thread. This one contains all 143 messages from November first to November sixth. You can download it here.

InGrDirect (tm) 0.7

Here's an early version of a little utility that directly queries In.Gr's online translation service and shows the results in an internet explorer window.

Muchos Gracias to Mr. Fotinakis for a wonderful suggestion for a utility.

This is just an early test version, so forgive the limited functionality.
I'm open to suggestions, though.

Google Desktop Search Plus

A note of interest about GDS: it automaticaly indexes .c and .h files. I guess the boys at google code in c and wanted to use their own tool to find content within their source... but what about us Delphi Devs?

Can the engine be modified for .pas and .dfm files? after all, they are just text...
Still waiting for an answer from google on this one. Meanwhile, you can try this (www.trivex.net) unofficial patch for GDS that allows the user to add all text extensions he wants (xml, vb, js, java, inc, pas, dfm, the works).

It works amazingly well.

(for those of you who haven't tried Google Desktop Search yet, download the official version here)

5Nov@Figaro

Disco Night! for all you Disco fans,
we are having a Disco celebration on Friday, 5th of November
The Place: Figaro Discotheque, Thessaloniki

For all of you who missed the wonderfull planning of this event,
here's the archived conversation thread in .pdf format...

www.symbols.com

Quite accidentally, I discovered this site: www.symbols.com
It's an online encyclopedia of signs and symbols used in all of history of mankind. Quite an amazing collection, cross referenced and with analytical articles about each one...
You could try this one for starters...

JavaDoc

Hey, I am becoming a true developer...
I was amazed to discover an open source tool for delphi
that has the equivalent functionallity of JavaDoc.
It's called DelphiCodeToDoc, and you can download it here.

For those of you who don't know (or don't care) what JavaDoc is, it's a tool for creating source code documentation out of its comments. Trully usefull to get an overview of a project someone else made...

So, I made a couple of code templates, for easy insertion of comments into my projects. Here's an extract of my delphi .dci file, in case you want to use them yourself:

[rem | Method Header | Borland.EditOptions.Pascal]
{*-----------------------------------------------
  simple method description
  @param
  @return
-------------------------------------------------}

[header | Unit Header | Borland.EditOptions.Pascal]
{*-----------------------------------------------
  simple unit header
  unit details

  @author
  @version

  Copyright (c) 2004, Space Invader Software
-------------------------------------------------}

How Hangovers Work

I you ever wanted to stop drinking, here's a very detailed article about what alcohol does to your body, and how to cope with the hangover after...

Google Desktop Search?

At last! Google in you computer! (not sure if this is a good of bad thing, though). Try this page for google's new desktop app that lets you search YOUR computer for text within Word Documents, email, AOL conversation logs (sorry, no MSN yet). After all, Guru's posting may not be so far away...

2004 California Mountain Unicycle Weekend

Could not believe it at first. Unicycle Weekend?

Some amazing people using amazing unicycle doing mountain biking can be viewed here. In fact, the entire site has amazing photo galleries of people doing unicycling... Try http://unicycling.smugmug.com and check out a gallery called "Unicon XII Closing"

A Contest - Fiasco

Well, it was a fiasco. Just one tried to answer. Kudos to mr. Symeonidis, who gave a correct, though quite incomplete answer. Here is my submition to the matter. It is still a first draft, so I am open to suggestions. It contains the usuall spelling and grammatical errors.

WhitePagesDirect Update 1.1.1b

Just implemented some requests... An Always-On-Top option is now available, also made the auto-copy to clipboard function optional... New version can be downloaded from zkeramid.com/misc/WhitePagesDirect.zip.

update: links changed to point to latest version (1.1.2)

A Contest - update #1

Perhaps the most important keyword pair for all of you out there looking to win this contest is "state change". Try typing this into google: "state change" gas liquid...

A Contest

I now proclaim that the "First Zaf's How It Works Contest" is open!

There will be a grand prize (trully grand...) for the person who will submit (in writting) the best explanation for how cooling machines work. By "Cooling Machines" I mean refrigerators, air conditioning, any kind of machine that "produces cold".

Here's a reason for the contest: More or less, everyone has some understanding of how you can produce heat at will, but cold? How can you produce cold? So, give it your best shot. Here are some terms you may find usefull in your research: thermodynamics, heat pump, freon, gas laws...

Submissions until the 26th of september... Submissions must be in .pdf, .doc or .rtf format. No links to ready-made explanations allowed. You must write your own. Have fun!

Kudos

Made an amazing discovery about the word kudos. I had only seen the word in computer games, and always thought it was street slang for respect or something. But yesterday, while reading John Allen Paulos's site, I met the word kudized, and decided to investigate further.

Britannica told me that the word is actually greek... κύδος, meaning glory. Did a search for κύδος through google and stumbled upon this page, that, among other ancient greek names, had Θουκιδίδης, which means He Who Gives Kudos to God...
Cool, right?

Το Βιβλίο Της Τρομερής Πλάκας

After having received a request from Mr. Lipiridis, I am making available for download in .pdf format an old (really old) collection of jokes I transcribed when I was young, foolish and had lots of hair...
You can download it here or from the links to the right.

update: links changed to point to zkeramid.com

Vladstudio.com

Through Iconfactory.com, I stumbled upon Mr. Vlad Gerasimov, an amazing russian designer. There are hundreds of desktop wallpapers in his site available for download, winamp skins, replacement windows cursors and calendars. If you like his designs you can even order them in poster form. His site can be reached here.

Personal Favorite (for the time being): The Two and The Elephant

WhitePagesDirect 1.1.1 Update

I added CAPI 2.0 support to WhitePagesDirect.
This means that if you have an ISDN line,
and an ISDN Modem with CAPI 2.0 support,
then, when your phone rings,
CallerID information is routed to WhitePagesDirect

I am not sure if it works with intracom's netmod,
I think they only offer CAPI 2.0 support over their USB connection.

I tested it with an AVM Fritz ISDN Card and it works fine.
Let me know if anyone can make it work with netmod.

You can download the new version from zkeramid.com/misc/WhitePagesDirect.zip.

update: links changed to point to latest version (1.1.2)

My Bio...

In case you wanna hire me, I've posted a short bio of mine. You can download it here.

Dead Parrot sketch

I recently came across a transcript of the Monty Python's Dead Parrot sketch. Must be by far the most famous one. It's between Cleese and Palin, the same couple that stared in A Fish Called Wanda (written by Cleese).
Anyone wanna start a Comedy Group with me?

I'm looking for Sarah Connor...

Looks like my childhood hero is not the man he used to be...

Check out this most interesting article on Wired about the big Austrian: The New American Idol, who once upon a time stared in the most rediculus movie of all times (Hercules In New York)

here's a bio of the man: Arnold Schwarzenegger

WhitePagesDirect 1.0.2 Update

A couple of bug fixes:
1. Text is copied to clipboard correctly now (in greek).
2. Displays a friendlier message when a number is not found.
3. Does not allow text input, requires 10 digits.

I guess you'll have to re-download it...

update: links changed to point to latest version (1.1.2)

WhitePagesDirect (tm)

After years of inactivity, I am finaly releasing a new utility for all the greeks frustrated by the online version of OTE's whitepages (whitepages.oteshop.gr). It's called WhitePagesDirect (tm) and it directly queries OTE's server with the phone number you are looking for...

Requires a connection to the internet to operate. Just type any 10-digit OTE number and press enter... You can download it from zkeramid.com/misc/WhitePagesDirect.zip.

update: links changed to point to latest version (1.1.2)

FeedDemon

I recently bought my third original piece of software, after 16 years in computing... :-)

Its called FeedDemon and its an RSS Aggregator.

An RSS Aggregator, or RSS Reader is a program that notifies you about what's new in your favorite sites...
Well, that's actually an oversimplification.

For example, you can tell the aggregator the names of your favorite blogs, and everytime you log-in to the internet, the aggregator will tell you if there are any new posts in them...

downloads

in an effort to get rid of tripod as a free host (far too many ads nowdays), I added a downloads section to my blog template... (you can probably see it on the right). Files are hosted by cylog.org (although mr Symeonidis does not know it yet :-) .
For the time being I just moved Ξερή and a couple of translations of old sci-fi stories.
I will move the rest of the material in a few days.

update: all files are now hosted by zkeramid.com

In case you ever wondered what do I look like... 

Plumbing

Approximately after a year and four months of sleepless nights, I managed to convince a plumber to come around and replace my dripping bathroom faucet. I used 18-192 (Techniki Kalipsi) and for the ridiculous amount of 70Eur I can now enjoy the silence... :-)

In case you think 70Eur is absurd, here are a couple DIY links:
Plumbing Care & Repair Handbook
Do-It-Yourself Network

Ball Speed in Sports

Had an argument with a couple of friends today about how ball speed is measured in sports like tennis, volleyball and baseball. Turns out they are using gun radars...
Just like the way the police measures the speed of cars...

here's a couple of links:

How Radar Detection works
How Your Speedchek Speed Sport Radar Gun Works
Definitions for Doppler Effect

A web standards checklist

here's a link I stole from http://christias.blogspot.com/:
A web standards checklist

Hard-Core Biker (not)

The police found my stolen bike...
The creep that stole it painted the wheels blue using spray paint,
removed one of the rear-view mirrors,
destroyed the fuel tank's cap and partially destroyed the license plate.

So now I have two bikes.
A Honda AX1 and a Yamaha TDR.
I'm thinking maybe I should buy a Suzuki to expand my collection :-)

Anyone care to comment?

kathisterimena #2...
photos from athens 2004 olympics...

kathisterimena #1 ... 

IANA | Root-Zone Whois Index by TLD Code

Root-Zone Whois Information

Scotland... 

oldie but goldie.... 

How the Bugatti Veyron Works

interesting article from HowStuffWorks

Maxthon Browser, IE clone

cute skull... 

GLClock

An old favorite of mine: GLClock

Interesting utils...

Desktop: Kapsules
Tray: xTrayTasks 1.10