Oscar Trelles

Have you ever wanted to give your life a spin that could change your destiny? Do you ever wonder what would have happened if you decided to follow a different career path? What if you could “save your game” right now, and you were given the opportunity of following your heart elsewhere, what would you do?

I’m using the video-game metaphor to establish a sense of security: after saving your game, you can risk everything and always be able come back and try a different approach if anything goes wrong. Also, I’m not implying that you are not happy with the life you live, just that there are things you would have liked to do, but didn’t because it was too risky or implied sacrificing your life’s relative stability.

For example, I used to sing for a rock band, back in Peru during my college years. My friends and I started getting together to make some noise, while the other guys were plugged to video-games. During the last of those four unforgettable years, we got to play with some big bands and were almost semi-famous… until we had to let the rockers life go, each one for different personal reasons. Only one of my friends is still with a band, and he’s doing pretty well. As for me, I still try to find some time to play my guitar and sing, at home; however, sometimes I entertain the idea of taking a break from everything, and go work on my next album

So, everybody has secret talents and desires, what are yours?

Remember that list of funny source code comments gathered and published by Network Computing a while ago? Well, apparently Linux kernel developers are not that “clean” when writing code… check out this survey conducted by Vidar Holen, a Norwegian student.

Apparently Vidar had quite a bit of free time on his hands, and certain fascination toward the language quality used by developers contributing to the Linux kernel. Ah… free spirit

Doing some little work related web research, I came across this site named Area 404, a collection of creative error pages for the infamous 404. Although I haven’t seen all of them, this one caught my attention and made me smile.

The site also provides some suggestions about making your own Error handling pages. There’s actually more to it, but is a good and friendly place to start.

I have to confess that, in addition to visiting clients and working on their stuff, one of the things that have been keeping me away from writing anything here has been “Hitman: Contracts”, the latest adventures of ’47′, the most expensive hired gun out there.

Last week, after getting a few “Silent Assassin” ranks, I beat my own record on finishing a game: 2 weeks. Pretty lame, eh? yeah, but can you expect for someone playing so discontinuoslly (you know, a few minutes here and there)… Facts is that, apparently, all 47′s fans are pissed because this one was sooooo easy. I hear you guys, I’m waiting for the fourth installment already.

Although the subject of the Hitman game series can be questionable in nature, it is actually a very good game, once you realize it is about accomplishing your mission objectives without killing anybody… anybody not in your list of targets that is For that to happen, you need do a fair amount of surveillance, explore multiple scenarios, strategize, and have an open mind, as in most cases you can find multiple ways to get the work done.

If you like strategy games and to minimize any violence, you may enjoy this one.

By the time Ben Forta mentioned this article on ZDNet in his blog, I had already lost any chance to get a hold on a domain name which status I was patiently monitoring, after their owners decided not to renew it, and let it expire. During this time, I’ve learned a lot about all the stages a domain name follows until it is finally dropped and deleted by the registrar, but nothing prepared me to the unhappy ending: losing it to the domain name mobs.

Since I had never tried to capture an expired domain name before, I decided to use GoDaddy’s backordering service, which at $18.95 is significantly lower than Network Solution’s offer, which is around $60. In time, I would learn that at any price, backordering that domain name was a waste of money anyway. Just to make sure you get the picture, the domain name I was trying to secure has been abandoned months ago and is not a famous one, or any thing like that, meaning that it wasn’t pointing to any website or being use for email purposes, it was just something I wanted in fair and personal use, much like oscartrelles.com.

GoDaddy’s monitoring service sent me regular email notifications, and when any changes were noticed on the domain name registry. That’s how I learned about the lengthy process that protects domain name owners from unintentional failure to renew their names, which is great. In total, it can take up to 60 days before a domain name is effectively deleted by a registrar, after the expiration. Here is a condensed guide to the different status codes for a domain name.

I was very excited when one of the last emails I received from GoDaddy informed me that the domain name I was monitoring had been finally dropped and marked for deletion, and asked for confirmation to attempt securing it, which I agreed of course. However, sad was my surprise when a few days later I was informed that my attempt to secure the name had failed. So, how many people were actually trying to secure a domain which, I was explaining above wasn’t of much use to anybody else? So, instead of canceling the monitoring, I continued, and what I found the next days was pretty in the lines of that article on ZDNet: the domain name was on sale, for ‘just’ 200 Euros.

So, what’s happening is that companies like BuyDomains.com are constantly monitoring expiring domain names, and being registrar themselves, are in better position than any regular person to secure domain names returning to the pool. With the tools these organizations are equipped with, what business does have any registrar offering backordering services to their customers? There’s no point, except of course getting their hand in your pockets. I would like to know if any regular mortal has succeeded backordering any domain name, with or without the help of a registrar.

It’s great to see more events being organized, thus descentralizing the Flash community scene. Flashbelt will take place in Minneapolis on June 24th, a one-day conference packed with great presentations delivered by well-known professionals, and a marvelous opportunity to local flashers to participate, and make of Flashbelt a regular event.

More information on Flashbelt’s web site.

I haven’t seen this posted anywhere, so I thought I would share this tip with you, although I don’t know how many of you use Flash Paper at all.

Anyway, here is the thing. Flash Paper is the coolest to show printable materials in-line, embedded in a web document. However you can’t quite predict the zooming factor of the piece, unless you pass along an specific value. So, what I discovered is that a SWF generated with the Flash Paper printer driver actually expects data for the initial scale in the variable INITIAL_VIEW_MODE, and defaults to whatever it calculates appropriate for presentation if undefined.

So, if you add this to inside your object tag:

<param name="FlashVars" value="INITIAL_VIEW_MODE=100" />

your document will be always loaded at 100% scale, regardless of the pixel size of the SWF embedded in your web page. This is particularly useful if you are using relative measurements.