maxsplanet.com

Global Village Backpackers (Toronto) review with photos:

Max — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 17:40:39 +0000

Recently me and my girlfriend visited Toronto and deicide to stay in Global Village Backpackers hostel. A friend of mine stayed there about a year ago and recommend it, also I briefly looked at some sites dedicated to hostels and the rating were kind of ok. But when we arrived and entered this hostel we started to think that we did a big mistake. Fist the hostel looks old from outside when you enter it also looks old and dirty, plus strange small, like the one where old people live (however after few ours of being there we get use to it). Anyway I may understand this, what is important is the room; bed was ok, even with clean shits and towels (or at least it seemed so), but the carpet on the floor, window and shelf were very dirty. For some reason there was a knife but without a spoon and a fork, what’s happened to them? The worst thing was the noise, of course there was no air conditioner in the room, so in order to make room cool you need to open the window and if you do that you get the noise from the street, which is dam loud. That was one side of the building, on the other side there is bar, I guess if you open the windows there it will be steel pretty loud. Basically, you have two choices: do not sleep well because of the high temperature in a room or do not sleep because of the really loud noise from the street (because of trams). Also the breakfast was included there: cheap cereals, milk, coffee and kind of pancakes were available; probably a bum would be happy to have such breakfast but definitely it is not suitable for normal people. Also the canteen where you can have it looks like there was Hurricane Katrina a night before. The only positive thing is the personal there, they were nice and kind, but I would prefer to have unfriendly personal but clean and quiet room. Next time when I go to Toronto will definitely choose another hostel.

FastSettings (update version 0.2)

Max — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:40:37 +0000

This is a Windows Mobile program that allows you to control volume and backlight level. The main advantage is a finger friendly interface. It works fine on Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 and X2, also, all the features suppose to work on most of the HTC phones such as touch HD or Diamond. On any other device the backlight adjustment feature will not work, but the volume control should work. This is a first release, and I plan to update it step by step. Currently the application supports only VGA and WVGA resolutions. Bellow there is a list of features:

Finger friendly GUI – done
VGA and WVGA resolutions – done
Hook of the volume buttons – done
Landscape mode – done
Hook of the volume icon in taskbar - in a progress
Autostart – in a progress

If you can please leave a feedback about bugs or how does the program work with your device or may be the feature that you want to see in this program.

Download: FastSettingsInstaller

I’m back, baby

Max — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 19:29:43 +0000

I’m back, baby. That is what Guy Ritchie could say after he released his last movie Sherlock Holmes. I must say I like. I like two movies made by G. Ritchie (excluding Sherlock): Snatch and Lock stock and two smocking barrels. And I constantly revise the fist one at least once a year during last 6 years. Two movies before Sherlock were failed (disastrous). I was not able to understand them; from the other point you can not be always on the top, I guess that was just a black line in his career. Anyway Sherlock Holmes is completely another story. Even though the idea of the move is different from Snatch (in Snatch there are so many cool expressions and moments that I memorized and use them in my every day life with my friends. You will not find something like this in Sherlock Holmes, never theless the movie is nice). I adore stories about Sherlock Holmes written by Conan Doyle but in this movie there was no any relationship with that stories except the name of two protagonists. The first hour of the movie was really strong, I field an inspiration and just enjoyed the movie (this happened not often for me). In a few moments I felt that the behavior of the main hero were like the behavior of the Jack Sparrow (from Pirates of the Caribbean, I also like this character), the actor’s play was wonderful. You have to see it, it worth it.

Richard Feynman

Max — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 04:15:18 +0000

Recently I found out about one famous physicist Richard Feynman. The way he talks and explains thing is fabulous. Also I’m impressed by his upbringing that he got from his parents. After that I’m not surprised that he got a Nobel price. When I recall my childhood it was nothing like this. I’m not surprised that there is a huge difference between me and him.

One of the guys on youtube make the following comment ”I wish my father were more like that. I hope I’ll be more like that when I become a father…”, that was exactly what I was thinking after I watched this video.

Bellow you will find some cool interviews with him.

Richard Feynman talks about light:

Richard Feynman on doubt, uncertainty and religion:

Richard Feynman Fire:

This will be enough for you to get interested and to start to search more information.
P.S. there is a book about him “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! I’m currently reading it, and it is really nice.

Homer`s Simpson car

Max — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:44:27 +0000

Do you know what kind of car Homers Simpson has? If you don’t than you can watch the video below and find out.

So, the real car of the Homer Simpson (from The Simpsons) is Lada Riva (or Lada 2105) produced by Russian manufacture AvtoVAZ.

Memory hack

Max — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:25:38 +0000

A few years ago I wanted to cheat in one program by increasing money counter. So I wanted to write a program that could do that. Theoretically it is simple you need to find a memory part that corresponds to counter variable and change this memory cell. Practically it was a bit difficult to find an example. Anyway after few days I found one example that did not work, but the basis was there. I changed it to suit my needs and make it work. Here you will find out how to use the following functions: OpenProcess, VirtualQueryEx, ReadProcessMemory, WriteProcessMemory.Now I want to share my code.

Basically, what it does is following:

1) you define variable value

2) program goes through all the memory of the other program and finds place with the same value

3) you change variable value in other program

4) repeat search with the new value (sometimes you need to do that several times till you get just a few records with the same value (for example in starcraft I got 4 places, and used just the first one)

Download: memory_hack

Here is a small demo:

TOEFL advise

Max — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 20:01:29 +0000

In 2008 I tried to pass toefl exam. For this purpose I bought Kaplan TOEFL IBT book. What can I say about it? In Amazon I red many positive comments, that’s why I bought this book. Also a couple of CD’s were attached to the book (they can be easily found in the Internet for example in torrent). What was inside the book? Authors describe rules, time and all the condition of the exam. Then for each part of the exam they gave some advises, an optimal strategy and a practice material. At first glance it looks reasonable and useful. But now let’s consider this from practical point. From psychology we know that in stressful situations (such as an exam) the only skills that are “hard coded” into your brain can be used. By “hard coded” I mean the skill (experience) that can be used automatically for example, if you have good fighting skills than in certain ruff situation you will be able to use it, otherwise there is no chance that you will learn or remember something in such situation (however in many Hollywood movies in stressful conditions the opposite situation is shown). So, my point is that all the advises and strategies are useless and you would not be able to use any of them unless you memories them and could use them automatically (to do this you have to spend a lot of your time, really a lot). Practice material is useful but you can find the similar one on CD. In my opinion this book is useless. However I found another book which I think it gives you exactly what you need to know, it is Mcgraw Hill 400 Must-have Words for the TOEFL.

So if you want prepare yourself to toefl, the following stuff may be useful for you

- Practice CD (not very important from which book, just any up-to-date practice material can help )

- Reading English books

- Book: 400 Must-have Words for the TOEFL

WindowsDocker

Max — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 00:09:54 +0000

This program allows to position current window in a certain area of the screen using combination of hotkeys. The screen is divided into 4 regions (also there are 2 extra regions which cover whole left and whole right part), you can move current window into any region by using hotkey combination (by default it is ctrl + number). The area of each screen can be changed in setting menu, also a hotkey combination can be set up arbitrarily.Bellow there is a short demo. If you find a bug in my program, please leave a comment with its description and I will try to fix it.

Downloads: WindowsDockerInstaller and WindowsDocker

FlashMediaBrowser

Max — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 19:12:11 +0000

This program is aimed to scan browser cache folder and find video files there. It can be very useful with websites such as intv.ru, where there is a commercial from 3 sides on top of the video.

How does it work? You load a page with video (for example it could be youtube) press the play button and when the video starts loading FlashMediaBrowser finds the video file in your browser cache folder and allows to watch it or save it without any commercial. Currently, FlashMediaBrowser is compatible with Opera and Firefox browser but not with Internet Explorer. In the preferences menu it is possible to define a custom folder for search in case if you use another browser or FlashMediaBrowser was not able to detect cache folders automatically. If you find a bug in my program, please leave a comment with its description and i will try to fix it.

Downloads: FlashMediaBrowserInstaller or FlashMediaBrowser

Update: I have just found a very similar program VideoCacheView. Now, I’m confused, should i continue development or stop it. The program does almost the same things as mine but it also has some more features (like it supports IE and Chrome) since it was more time in development. What do you think, do i need to continue update FlashMediaBrowser or give up?

Indian head (Tête d’indien)

Max — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 01:25:39 +0000

This summer I had an opportunity to go to Gaspésie (Quebec, Canada) www.gaspecamping.com. There were 5 of as and for this trip we rent Suzuki sx4. Oh my god, this is the most uncomfortable car ever, after 2 hours of sitting in it I started to fill pain in my ass and the duration of the trip in one way was about 8-10 hours. I don’t understand what engineers made this car, it just awful, even more I do not understand who buys this car; the exterior design is just ugly. I don’t know how someone can by this when on the market there are many much better vehicles for the same price or even cheaper, for example Mazda 3 (event Hyundai and Kia make more attractive cars).

Anyway, when we reach Gaspe we stopped at the camp called Indian Head. Very good place, I recommend it to everybody. Then we took kayak and make a small tour around. That was my first experience with a kayak and I really like it. The landscape around there was very beautiful, also the water was quite still, we moved with a good speed it was just wonderful. This is difficult express by words you just need to try it on your own. I wish I could have a camera like this:

Since it was the first time when I tried kayak my friends decided to teach me how to return back if my kayak is up side down. Unfortunately I did not succeed and at the end I had to swim on my own to the beach. The water was f…ing cold, at about 10 degrees. Anyway it was really nice time.

Also during this trip we attend a festival there. The main reason was that there was a capoeira show and one of our friends was in there. The stuff that guys did in that show was quite nice, and as for me I’m not able to do that, but if you look from prospective of spectacle it just subset of break-dance. I mean that 95% of the moves that they did there also quite often perfumed in break-dance and not only that much more. If we consider capoeira as a dance it looks very pure compare to break-dance. One of the arguments in favor of capoeira can be that it is not is just a dance art it is also a marshal art. Even though their moves can be used in a fight, without a real fight practice (which is not given in capoeira class) it is useless. So, in my opinion it just a dance which is not as impressive as a break-dance. However my friends love it, and started to attend capoeira classes.

Also we went on the boat to see how people hunt lobsters. We were on a boat about an hour and what we see was just like how sea-folk took out different cages with lobsters, showed them to us and talked some stories about lobsters. Anyway I did not like this trip, it was not very interesting, definitely will not do that again, and don’t recommend to others.

The last thing, what I rely like is a nature around there, beautiful mountain landscape, with a lot of green trees, it was just lovely. Here are few photos that were taken during trip: