H0M3 shARE ABout conTACT

What's it all about? Life I mean... Not much I suppose. We are all parts of the same universe, equally important and unimportant parts of matter, forever changing form. All bound by the same energy. It just so happens that at the moment our matter occupies space in the form of humanity. A cosmic fluke that we're alive and aware (most of us anyway). And just as quickly and randomly as we appeared, so quickly and randomly shall we disappear, without a hint of our existence. And not just us as individuals, the whole human race. So what is the point of it all? Well, our current form has quite a few things to offer. As tragic is our existence, so magical is it also. Falling in love, good food, helping out our fellow life forms, fun times with friends, and of course creativity. So having put it all into context, when I'm not out with my friends, helping out, busy falling in love or cooking, I enjoy being creative. And here you will find (amongst other things) some of the fruits of my labour, beginning with my latest creation! :)

Coffee Table PC
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Tie together donated furniture and a sentimental attachment to machines and what do you get? It won't take you more than a day (full day though) and with a bit of luck, skill and imagination you should hopefully end up with something like this... ;)

>> Download the full SmilingPirate Coffee Table PC Guide.

coffee_table_pc_top coffee_table_pc_under



Next-to-Nothing Site
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It's nice having a website. I like it anyway... But the problem is having a website that doesn't cost you! Well this is how I did it for a total cost of €13.68 (that's about $18 or £11.50). This cost includes domain name registration, web hosting and email hosting (by those lovely people at GoogleApps) and the creation of (as you can see) a minimalistic fast loading website, a news blog and photo database. It honestly isn't too hard to learn or do, all the software that you will need is free and apart from the €13.68 the only other cost will be your time.

>> Coming soon: the full SmilingPirate Building A Next-to-Nothing Website Guide.

Note: I believe in striving for originality but also believe looking at live examples can be very helpful. So for those who are interested you can download all 5.1 MB of The Entire SmilingPirate.Org Website. (I will update this whenever I make major changes)

smilingpirate.org_screenshot


Internet_Census_2012_Worldmap Internet Census 2012
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This guy's a genius! Now I know he only mentions nmap and not BackTrack but I didn't know where else to put this and I really think it's worth sharing. These are the fruits and labours of one person doing something spectacular and sharing it for free. I am in no way taking any credit for this work I'm just sharing the link. Well done mate! This is the ultimate and definitive Internet Census 2012.

Kyrillos' ROM Manual
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Android: by far and away the one and only smartphone OS for anyone that wants something more than one button to mindlessly paw at... Aaaaanyway, one of the great things about Android is the, oh yeah, custom ROMs! I have a Samsung Galaxy 3 (GTI5800) running a custom ROM called Kyrillos' ROM, the best overall custom ROM for this model! So, during the flashing process I kept notes and did it over and over with newer versions, testing backups, deleting the wrong bloatware and temporarily bricking my phone, froze the default keyboard before installing a new one which led to an endless Force Close loop, anyway, you get the picture. During my endeavours with Kyrillos' fantastic creation I ended writing this manual. I haven't updated it in a while (but it should still be very useable) hopefully I will have the time in the very near future! ;)

>> Download the full Kyrillos v9.5 Extended Instructions.


The Speed Debate
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If you do have a custom ROM and you also have a phone with limited internal memory or just have a shitload of apps, the chances are you're using something along the lines of App2SD or Hybrid-Data2SD, etc. And if you're not you should be! My personal choice is Hybrid. It may be a little bit more complicated (especially if you change card or want to restore) but it really does the business.

Anyway, the big debate that was going around while I was researching this was whether the Class of the card counts or the Random R/W speed. I vote the latter! The change in performance/lag is very noticeable plus you get a bunch of space to boot (meaning the expression not the action)!

Refer to the Manual above for a how-to if your ROM supports Hybrid. The card that worked wonders for me was the SanDisk 32GB Micro SDHC Class 4 SDSDQM-032G-B35A (click here for some more info on the subject). Thanks to the removable media industry's pushing of Class the card set me back the very reasonable amount of €23.90 (roughly $30/£20.50) and the change in performance is worth it! ;)
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