sentient beings

We have the all-new Megcos 1182 at home since we got it from my sister for Christmas. While it may not be the most technologically advanced musical cow, we were able to hack it with a mixture of luck and coincidence.

DISCLAIMER: This hack can potentially harm your Megcos 1182. There is NO known reset procedure should anything go wrong. Hitting the Megcos 1182 HARD is your best bet in case anything goes wrong.

The Megcos 1882 or Musical Cow is able to produce a number of interesting sounds and songs. The nose will generate a "moo" sound and the bell will sound like a cowbell. The A button will sound like a sheep, the B button is reminiscent of a rooster and the C button will sound lilke Zorro's Tornado. The 1 button will make a cellphone-like sound, the 2 button will make you think you're in the London tube (that's the underground for US English afficionados) and the 3 button will make a ticking sound like only a clock can. Each of the A, B, C, 1, 2 and 3 buttons will also play a song. Each of these buttons will alternate between "sound" and "song". The songs themselves will rotate and are the same for all buttons. I can't name all of the songs, but there's 10 of them.

However! There are more possibilities. With a little bit of playing around delving into the User Interface, we were able to extract 12 more sounds! These sounds are the following.

• "A" and "Triangle";
• "B" and "Square";
• "C" and "Circle";
• "1" and "Star";
• "2" and "Heart";
• "3" and "Hexagon".

The way to actually reveal these hidden sounds is to actually slide the "on" button not all the way "on" (or not all the way "off"). Sliding it just far enough will result in the buttons producing the said 12 additional sounds. If you don't slide the button for enough, the normal sounds will continue to sound or you get cut-off versions of the 12 additional sounds.

Also: Hexagon? What 1-year old is going to even reproduce that? HEXAGON! LOLLERSK8Z!

Today, well technically yesterday, I launched Frozen Whisper. It is a portfolio made for Anne Elst, model and concert photographer. Not satisfied with the implementation and maintainability of existing albums, I decided to write my own. The portfolio is simple and uses PHP to dynamically create photo albums. No database is used, instead, the website crawls itself for pictures. A text file is used to create captions, description of the shoot and more. I also implemented MooTools for the scrolling thumbnails.

Be sure to check it out!

The website was well received with comments such as "very clear", "nice and uncluttered".

Lunarpages is now offering shared Linux webhosting at only 4.95 USD/month. That's dead cheap!

For that money, you get 1500 GB Storage, 15000 GB Data limit (that's virtually unlimited for any normal website. You get all the regular goodies: PHP4/5, Ruby on Rails, Joomla, WordPress, MySQL and much much more including unlimited domains, webmail and more.

Check out Lunarpages or click the banner below.

The contest for best post-title is over. I just won it. Now, on to reality.

Did we need another browser? What's up with Google supporting Firefox and then coming out with their own Open Source browser?

I took Google Chrome for a spin as a developer and found out some interesting things. Sure, Google Chrome has no developer toolbar at this moment, but who needs a developer toolbar with all the built-in goodies from Safari? (Thanks Lagaffe). Check out what Google Chrome has to offer for developers.

Until now, people had to rely on Firefox and Firebug to debug their web pages. IE has had a developer toolbar since not too long ago but, face it, nobody develops for IE anymore. We all build things according to standards and then check IE to see where they didn't apply the standards. Right? Well, not entirely. A lot of people still depend on IE as their sole window on the web. This article does not apply to them.

Google chrome may well be the best thing ever to happen in the last year for web developers. Loaded with Apple's Webkit, it has what is probably today's best rendering engine. Webkit/Safari is the only browser that's getting a 100% test result on ACID3. Granted, it's on a developer build and Chrome isn't currently profiting from that build and is stuck at 79% which is slightly better than Safari's current stable release test result.

But how does one take advantage of all the features Chrome has to offer?

Read on to find out

Some weeks ago, I launched serialkeep.com, a website that can assist you in remembering important information wherever you are.

Just over a year ago, I was burglared. They took the usual: portable game computers, mobile phones, wallets and digital cameras. Oh, and my leather pants that were sitting in a bag they also took - probably to carry the stuff they just took.

I of course neglected to write down important information such as serial numbers, IMEI numbers and distinctive properties of the items.

That's why I decided to launch serialkeep.com. It's a simple website where you can enter freeform information on serial numbers, IMEI numbers, software serials. You can also abuse it by entering telephone numbers, contact information or license plates.

It's very freeform but it's available wherever you are. If your telephone gets stolen why you're away from home, you can look up the IMEI number and have it blocked. If your car is stolen but you can't remember the license plate, you can look it up and have it reported stolen.

Even better: when an item is stolen, you can report it. Reporting an item as stolen will flag that item. When someone buys a second hand product, they can enter the serial number into the database and they will be informed if the item is stolen. No, the owner of the allegedly stolen item will not be informed.

Please register and check it out. I've been using it for a while now and all the bugs seem to have been cleared. Registration is free.

Your data is secure and private - I only want an e-mail address so we can reset your password should you lose it. There is no connection between you as a physical person and the items you register.

On a technical note: this is my first site in PHP/MySQL. It's also the first site in which I used Ajax techniques and fooled around with MooTools. Comments are welcome.