Star Trek 2009 - Most Pirated Movie in 2009

According to the TorrentFreak website, the latest Star Trek movie is the most downloaded movie in 2009.

I must admit that I participated in getting this movie on number 1 on this chart.... BUT, I also saw this movie in the opening weekend in the theater, and I own the movie on a Blu-Ray disc.

Since I don't have the capabilities to rip the movie myself, I downloaded the ripped version. No nag screens and other crap on the downloaded version, so I prefer to watch the ripped/downloaded version over the original Blu-Ray disc (also see this posting) on my Popcorn Hour media player.

So being the most downloaded movie doesn't necessarily mean most pirated (in my opinion).

Sure, there still are lots of people who'll pirate anything they get their hands on, but that doesn't mean that they would even think about going to the cinema or buy the disc. The studios wouldn't make money of them anyway.

But hé, that's just my humble opinion........

Update on Monday, January 4, 2010 at 19:58 by Willem

The EFF has an excellent piece on the most pirated movie. This definitely shows that they're NOT losing money on piracy

And The Winner Is.....

James Hetfield of Metallica by Guillaume Raisonnable, on FlickrMy photo of James Hetfield (lead singer of Metallica) won this years photo contest at the local cameraclub (out of 51 other photos).

The photo was taken this year at their concert in Ahoy, Rotterdam [1, 2], and this image felt right from the beginning.

Click to read more ...

Rammstein @ Gelredome

Rammstein @ GelredomeOn Sunday December 6th, we saw the Rammstein 'Liebe ist für alle da' tour in the Gelredome in Arnhem, the Netherlands. The evening started with the support act Combichrist. These guys use drums and synthesizer to generate lots of noise. Music/rhythm; good, vocals; bad :-). Definitely not my cup of tea.

Just after 8 o'clock Rammstein started with the song 'Rammlied' from their latest album. Probably the best song for opening their show. And a great show it was. The show was filled with enough pyrotechnics to provide a small village in Siberia with warmth for at least a year.

Click to read more ...

The Holidays are Coming?

Is it just me or is the most expensive month of the year coming soon? It's that or there's a new worm/virus/trojan at work trying to deliver spam on my mailserver.

'Great' deals on SoftwareCurrently, I have over a hundred rejections an hour (normally one or two a day), and the ones that make their way through are either;

• 'great' deals on (replica) Rolex, Viagra, Windows/Adobe Software and other stuff, or
• about making >$3000USD a month with only 2 hours of work a day.

Anyway, I hope that the spam protection in the Snow Leopard mail server is as good as my current MDaemon mail server.

Squarespace Pro Account

Which is almost for free with the current USD -> EURO exchange rate (and the appropriate coupon codes).

Thanks to Mevio for supplying a 12% off-for-life coupon code.

Where Did the Guy Go?

We went to Doel, Belgium last Saturday with the local camera club. Even though I've already been there before it still manages to capture my attention and imagination. You see completely different things each time.

I did make less photos this time, but not much less :)

All my photos from Doel can be viewed on my flickr page.

Photoshop CS4 and Snow Leopard

Photoshop CS4 was released as an Universal app (system requirements). So both PowerPC (PPC) and Intel support. Since it's an Universal app, you shouldn't need Rosetta on an Intel .
So upgrading to Snow Leopard shouldn't be a problem... Until you're gonna use the droplet functionality of Photoshop CS4. That piece of code still needs Rosetta to function.

So no way that CS4 is Universal. It's just another piece of buggy Adobe software.

What's next? An announcement that this crap won't be supported and that you can upgrade to the >1000USD Adobe CS5 suite next year?

Upgrading to OSX Snow Leopard

I tried to upgrade to OSX Snow Leopard today. 'Tried' is the keyword here. It seems though that the current installment of OSX (Leopard) is installed on a file system supposedly UNSUPPORTED by Apple OSX Snow Leopard.

NOTE: I have no way of knowing if the release I have is the final 'Gold Master'. So it could be that my findings are irrelevant for the actual (official) Snow Leopard OS.
I will however verify my findings when I have the actual 'Gold Master' in my possession.

When you run the installer from the OS (or by booting from the DVD) I get a error message saying that I need a GUID Partitione Table disk to install the new OS on. Somehow I use a different (and unsupported) partition scheme. And I thought that I selected all the best options during the clean install a while back......

There's no way of converting (using Disk Utility and/or Terminal commands) this to the appropriate settings without formatting your hard drive. So a normal upgrade is out of the question for me (or so it seems). And for many others I guess, since I won't be the only one with the 'wrong' partition table setup.

Click to read more ...

Redelijkheid.com as a FireFox Search Engine

While the content on my website increases, it's getting (a bit) harder to find certain content. Sure, there's this search form in the top right of the website, but this means that you have to open the website first, enter the keyword and hit 'Enter'.

To speed things up I created a custom FireFox search engine. Using this I can search for content on my website directly from the browser. No matter what site I'm currently on.

The custom search engines are located in the profiles directory.

OSX: ~/Library/Application Data/Firefox/profiles/<random>/searchplugins/<searchengine>.xml

Windows: c:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<random>\searchplugins\<searchengine>.xml

By adding the following XML file (right-click - Save As) to the directory listed above, you add the Redelijkheid.com search engine to your Firefox search engines.

Click to read more ...

To Photoshop (or not)

To Google in the OSX DictionaryBrandnames turning into verbs is nothing new. Google turned 'verb' a while back officially, and can be found in several dictionaries all over the world. You could think that the brand owner would like it this when a product (or brand) becomes a commodity. Well, not every brand.....

Adobe has a section on the 'Photoshop' usage on their website [mirror]. It seems that photoshopping is a bad verb. Why? I don't know. No matter how good or bad an image or photo is altered or with what tool. The most common remark is 'PHOTOSHOPPED'. All this means is that people associate image manipulation with Adobe Photoshop. There's a reason that this piece of software is on top of the image manipulation food chain. It's simply the best (and probably the most expensive by the way :) ).

After looking for 'google' in the Apple OS X Dictionary, I also tried 'photoshop'. and guess what I found:

to Photoshop in Apple OS X Dictionary/me sits back and wonders when Apple (or even me) receives a letter from an Adobe attorney :) for the incorrect usage of the Photoshop brand.