It's a bird! It's a plane! ... AARGH! IT'S A PLANE!!

When I first saw the image above, I thought it was Photoshopped (or GIMPed, if you prefer open-source). A plane flying that low? Obviously a fake, just like that five-headed snake.

However, it turned out that the beach is very real. It’s called Maho Beach, and it’s located in the Netherlands Antilles in the Caribbean Sea, right next to the Princess Juliana International Airport. Now I wonder how the sunbathers could keep their hearing intact.

BTW why hasn’t any evil tyrant thought of hearing sense destruction as a form of corporal punishment? All they have to do is put the condemned in a chamber and blast him with a noise of around 200 dB. Chopping off tongues and gouging out eyes have been done in ancient times, but I haven’t heard of a punishment that destroys the senses of hearing, smell, or touch. Sense deprivation is a notorious torture method, though.

Or would it?

A few years ago I read an article in Popular Science (a very fascinating mag, it is) about bananas (fortunately they have an online version of that article here). It stated that some scientists are concerned that the world’s most popular fruit is in danger of extinction, and now they’re researching ways to save it.

“What?” you might say, “but I see bananas in the market every day!”

Well, that ubiquitousness is part of the reason of this concern. You see, most, maybe 90%, of all bananas consumed in the world is of a certain variety called the Cavendish. This variety was found in Southeast Asia (yeah!) in early 20th century, cultivated, researched, and put into commercial production about 50 years ago. Since then, most of the bananas in the world are exactly the same, as if they were cloned from a single host. Here in Indonesia we have several other varieties available, like the ambon, raja, pulo, etc., but that’s a special case.

The problem with this condition? A single disease outbreak could wipe out most of the world’s banana population. It had happened before to another mass-produced variety called the Gros Michel, which was wiped out by the Panama disease in the 1960s. In fact, Cavendish replaced the Michel as the world’s banana because of its resistance to the disease.

Diversity is a key to species survival. Different genetic properties within a species guarantees that there’ll always be some that survive any given jeopardy, be it diseases, predators, pests, human, or anything else.

This theory is also referenced in the best-seller manga 20th Century Boys, which dubbed it “The Chosen 1%”, as a guarantee that 1% of the human population will survive any virus Friend (the main antagonist) befalls upon humanity. So you see, Urasawa Naoki-sensei rocks! Hehe.

The point? We are all created different for a reason. We may have different colors, views, opinions, tastes, preferences, ways of expressing ourselves, IQs, talents, fashion styles, learning styles, communication styles, and so on, but that’s the way it’s meant to be. We need to understand one another, not look down on, oppress, or even worse, try to kill others who are different from us.

I know it’s difficult. Society, education, the media, and even our own ego usually prevent us from respecting different people. That’s one of the reasons why genocide, negative stereotypes, racism, and divorces happen. Sometimes we can tolerate one kind of difference but can’t tolerate another, like race or religion.

But we have to try. Right?

Otherwise we might face the same fate as the Gros Michel.

…

But if one day the whole world must switch to avocado splits and monkeys are depicted eating apples, at least here in Indonesia we would still have fried bananas, haha!

(Originally posted on my Friendster Blog. Anybody still remember what that is?)

Productivity Timer is a utility that detects whether or not you’re using a productive application (e.g. word processor, spreadsheet, IDE) and keeps track of the time you spend on it. It’s currently in beta, so there may still be some errors.

To try it out, you’ll need the Microsoft .NET Framework version 2.0 or greater (latest version is 4.0). I suggest you get it first before installing ProdTimer!

How to use:

1. Enter the productive window names in the “Productive Windows” textbox, one line per app. This can be the application name, website name, IM username… any text in the window title bar.
2. Turn on the timer.
3. Click Hide to hide the main window (you can open it later by double-clicking the clock icon on the system tray).
4. The “Productive Time” dialog will show the total time spent on productive activities. To pause the timer, simply click this dialog to make it active (provided it isn’t listed in “Productive Windows”).

Of course, this system is rather easy to cheat… but then that’s just deceiving yourself!
The most important thing is still self-motivation!

Download

Future versions will include these features, among others:

• Menu to choose productive apps from all active processes
• Customizable colors
• Statistics (productive time percentage, most used app, etc.)
• Reminder when you’ve been unproductive for a certain amount of time
• Productivity history graph
• Binaries for other operating systems

Application icon made by MDGraphs.

More details coming soon!

MashableMashable

Now you know… And knowing is half the battle!

I find this game trailer… touching. I don’t know, maybe it’s Friday I’m being sentimental, haha. What do you think?

The place is quite far from the town, but it’s nice and peaceful. The air is cool and fresh, and it’s quiet save for the occasional distant train klaxon. In the distance, visible from the front door, a mountain stands proudly.

Nice view huh?

There is such a thing as free lunch...

... and free dessert

Trying to cross the mud, but it's deeper than I thought

A closer look at the paddy fields

Fishing my sandal before it gets carried away

Taking unnecessary but fun risks, as usual

Cleaning up

Vito, with a slight cold

Hope he’ll want to eat something after this is finished. I’ve spent quite some cash buying him feeder mice that eventually went unconsumed. Besides, he’s having a slight cold, his cage was too humid these last few days…

Close-up of moulting

This app is inspired by two things: those motivational posters you see about everywhere, and Lionel Messi’s awesome performance against Arsenal in April 2010. It’s, well, a motivational poster with a moving picture. The video is streamed from YouTube. Both the title and small text are customizable, but an overly long paragraph will ruin the display. This will be fixed in future versions.

If you interested, you’re free to use this on your own site, blog, forum, etc.

Just paste the following code into your page’s HTML with the necessary modifications on the highlighted parts. Note that you need to input the title, small text, and video ID twice; this is not a mistake.

<object id="video" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000"
width="550" height="400"
codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0">
<param name="align" value="middle" />
<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" />
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="false" />
<param name="quality" value="high" />
<param name="bgcolor" value="#000000" />
<param name="src" value="http://petewarrior.com/motivideo/motivideo.swf" />
<param name="name" value="video" />
<param name="flashvars" value="title=[insert title here]&desc=[insert small text here. you can use some HTML tags]&videoID=[insert video ID here]" />
<param name="allowfullscreen" value="false" />
<embed id="video" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="550" height="400"
src="http://petewarrior.com/motivideo/motivideo.swf"
flashvars="title=[insert title here]&desc=[insert small text here. you can use some HTML tags]&videoID=[insert video ID here]"
name="video" bgcolor="#000000" quality="high" allowfullscreen="false"
 allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" align="middle"></embed></object>

(I hope this won’t gobble up my bandwidth quota )

Last night, though, I decided to stay up to watch the Barcelona vs Arsenal game, broadcasted live from Camp Nou, Barcelona. And man, I’m glad I did! Otherwise I wouldn’t be witness to the brilliant play of the awesomeness that is Lionel Messi. He scored four goals, 3 of them before half time. And all of them are… beautiful.

It even inspired me to whip up this little Flash app here, which is basically a motivational poster that plays a video from YouTube in place of the motivational picture. It also displays a customizable title and paragraph. I call it the MotiVideo.

You can also use this on your own Web site, blog, forum, or whatever, with a video and message of your choice! Just go to the MotiVideo page find out how. It’s free to use, of course.