Posts filed under 'Main'
If you talk to me on AIM or MSN you’ll know that I’m constantly saying little things like “wow, look at this news article” or “heh, check out this quote.”
I’m sure I annoy a lot of you, but if you’re somebody who actually likes my tidbits of information you’re in luck!
Starting today, I posted on the right side of my blog something I call my “Thought Blog.” You know, all those little things that aren’t significant enough to justify a whole blog post. I’m basically just using Twitter, mashed up with the Google AJAX feed API. I’ve let Google cache my Twitter RSS feed, and then used some clever AJAX to show it on the right. If you want to do the same, it’s basically just a modified version of this script.
It seems that I’ve finally found a use for Twitter – the web2.0 app that ScoobyScoble seems to love so much.
If you want to subscribe directly to my Twitter RSS feed, please do so. Here’s the URL:
http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline/806623.rss You’ll notice that it will also include an entry for every blog post that I do here (as well as on shoutwire.) It’s like 1 feed you can use to see links to everything I’m writing!!
To do that, I’m actually using a wordpress plugin called Twitter updater.
So check it out, and let me know what you think. I hope it makes reading my ramblings a little easier.
February 3rd, 2008
The following is my views only, and is in no way related to those of my employer or company, or any websites I run:
Am I the only one who thinks the writers strike is ridiculous? My stance on unions is now pretty well known, but I still don’t see any merit here.
IF they felt they weren’t being paid enough, ok that’s fine.
IF they felt that their hours were too long, or too much was being demanded of them, ok fine.
IF they had a problem with working conditions, ok fine.
But those aren’t the issues. The issues is wanting to get paid residual income for DVDs, online sales, downloaded shows, etc.
To that, I say: Bullshit. You were paid a fee to write a show. That’s it. That’s your contract. Every show you write is expected to be good, so you shouldn’t be paid based on how well the show is.
If you feel you’re not getting enough money, don’t ask for residuals, ask for a raise. If you purely must have residuals, then you shouldn’t get a contract at all. You should be paid solely on how well your stuff sells. You shouldn’t have both.
To me, I compare the television writers to software engineers like myself. We write code for a living. Look at the typical Microsoft employee. He doesn’t get paid based on how well Vista sells. And it’s a good thing too, as they still have employees left over who worked on Microsoft Bob.
We’re paid to write code, and that’s it. Once we write it, it’s no longer ours. The television industry should still be the same way. Get over yourselves and get back to work.
February 3rd, 2008
When it comes to internet phishing or spamming, much success relies upon tricking the user into clicking a link. Often times one can tell how legit a link is simply by looking at it. For example, if you’re telling me that you’re paypal but I don’t see paypal.com in the URL, I’m going to know it’s fake.
Recently though, some people (including myself) have stumbled upon a way to redirect people to a website using an innocent looking Google link. The trick revolves around the “I’m feeling Lucky” feature of Google.
By simply appending http://icrapoport.com/slider_table_top_layout/ &btnI=3564 to a Google search query, the user is taken to the first result for that query.
In order to use this trick, you’ll need to find a search term that your website comes up first for. Since it can be any term though, it’s quite easy to make up a random string and include it on your page. Here’s an example:
If I wanted to “Rick Roll” you (trick you into viewing a Rick Astley video) I could link to the youtube video, but you might not click. If I used this trick though, I could send you the following URL:
http://www.google.com/search?q=eBGIQ7ZuuiU&btnI=3564
In this URL, q= is the search term, and then the btnI=3564 tells Google to use the “I’m Feeling Lucky” feature. Clicking it, you’ll be taken straight to the YouTube page.
Ok, neat trick but where’s the security vulnerability?
I used Rick Astley here, but I could have easily used 2 girls 1 cup. Even worse, what if I had used a fake page made to look like Google instead? You might not notice that the URL at the top is different, and you may even type in your username and password to log in. It may not work on the sophisticated internet users, but using the trusted Google.com domain will certainly bypass any anti phishing software that works with email programs.
Note: The same can be done with any type of proxy site on the internet. GoDaddy recently told me I had to move Unblockd off of my server there for this reason.
January 31st, 2008
I remember the early days of the internet, when you had to have a service like prodigy or AOL or compuserve to get online. For me, those didn’t last long. As soon as I could get my own dial up, I did. Hell, I remember friends stopping by to use my super fast 28.8 modem to download stuff. Ahh.. those were the days.
Anyway, I also remember the revolution. The day when we discovered ICQ and AIM and ditched email for instant messaging. IM made a lot more sense – we didn’t have to wait for a response, and we were able to have a conversation with people when THEY felt like talking.
It was also great because IM didn’t come with chain letters or annoying spam (at least, not until AOHell and FateX came out.)
Today though, it looks like teens are taking another step. When I was in Dallas I noticed that my 16 year old cousin and her friends spent all day in the living room on their laptops. I also noticed that they didn’t use any email or instant messaging programs – only MySpace and Facebook.
When I asked about it, they told me that there’s no need for email or IM since all their friends are on MySpace anyway. If they’re online, they’re logged in and chat through there.
Are IM programs about to be obsolete? I doubt it, but it’s an intriguing trend among today’s teens. Personally I think it’s a step backwords, but what do I know? Knowing what ICQ and IRC are make me an internet geezer.
January 31st, 2008
Do you remember what you were doing on 1-31-07? It’s the day that the Boston police, anti-terror unit, bomb squad, and mass media went totally insane when Cartoon network put up some lite-brite style ads around the city.
It’s the day they arrested artists for placing advertisements. It’s the day the terrorists officially won again.
Of course, it’s not the first time Boston has over-reacted. They DID blow up a traffic monitoring device that the city placed when they confused it for a bomb.
In talking with Jim the other day, he brought up the old Franklin quote: “He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.”
Then, I reminded him of 2 more of my favorites:
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote. – Also Franklin
And
Sacrificing privacy for security is like taking the walls off your house to build a fence around it. – no clue who said this.
1-31-07 is just one more reminder of the sad path that this country is heading down.
January 31st, 2008
Earlier today I had a need to encode some text into various forms, like MD5, Sha-1, etc.
I couldn’t find an easy way to do it without writing a script, so I made a simple little website.
I know only like 3 out of 100 people will find this useful, but check it out anyway:
It’s called Text Encrypt (www.textencrypt.com)
And yes I know, most of those methods are encoding, not encrypting – but tons of people search for encrypt, and all the good encode names were taken.
January 30th, 2008
When I got back from vacation, one of the many emails I had to go through was a Godaddy one saying that my password had been reset. I thought nothing of it, and clicked the spam button in gmail – thinking it was a phishing attack.
Today, that email suddenly jumped back into my head as I was about to register some new domain names and couldn’t login to GoDaddy.
A quick call to friends at GoDaddy revealed that somebody had guessed my Google account password, and used my Gmail to reset my GoDaddy account. Thankfully, I caught it before they had changed any DNS settings, registered, or transferred any domains.
I also managed to change my Google account password to something even harder to guess. (I’m actually shocked that somebody had guessed a 7 letter non dictionary word in the first place – if that’s how they got it.)
I’ve read about other techniques that involve including parts of a different domain onto your webpage, then using javascript to read what the browser auto-fills in the form. This can all be done in a 1px iframe apparantley – maybe that’s how it was done. I’m not sure.
Anyway, it’s scary just how much your Google account actually has access to. I’m lucky I caught it in time.
January 30th, 2008
Hehe, search Google for Dangerous Cult and the first result is the homepage of Scientology. In this case, I sort of agree with the Googlebomb.
On that same search, you’ll also see a list of dangerous cult warning signs. For a fun exercise, see how many apply to your religion!
January 29th, 2008
If You’ve haven’t heard from me much lately it’s probably because I took a long weekend (Friday – Monday) to fly down to Dallas. It was a pretty fun trip. On Friday night we went to Billy Bob’s to see a Texas favorite – Robert Earl Keen. We all agreed that Merry Xmas From The Family is probably the best song ever written – which is good because I’d hate to disagree with Fake Steve.
REK must have just had eye surgery or something, as he came out wearing an eye patch on his right eye. We kept waiting for him to just go aaargh! into the microphone, but it never happened. He did make a joke though, saying he asked his wife to get him an imac, iphone, and ipod and that she instead got him an ipatch.
On Saturday we went back to Fort Worth to visit the stockyards. History Lesson: Fort Worth was where all the cowboys would congregate on the great cattle drive north to the railroad back in the early 1900’s. It also housed a lot of America’s cattle – supplying over $11 million worth of horses in the world war.
It was kind of neat, they still do daily cattle drives right down the street.
It was funny to see them lead the bulls through a parking lot. How do you explain to your insurance company that a bull scratched your new truck? Of course, it is Texas so I’m sure they’re used to it.
Downtown Forth Worth was just as cool. You’d see old style buildings, the original 1900’s bricks in the roads, and the occasional cute girl on horseback.
Just like Hollywood has stars for all the actors, Fort Worth has stars for all the great cowboys. I managed to find the star of one of my heroes, Chris Ledoux.
For those who don’t know, Chris is the only man in both the cowboy and country music hall of fame. He died of cancer a year or 2 ago, and is the subject of the “good ride cowboy” song that Garth Brooks released.
I also particularly liked this little bar called the “Love Shack.” Ok, I shouldn’t say bar – it’s more like a bunch of tables and a hot dog stand in between buildings. I wouldn’t have found it if not for hearing a heavily accented man singing Counting Crows “A Long December”
Still, it was a cool place to have a beer.
After that, we headed to downtown Dallas to check into a hotel so that we could watch my cousin Paige compete in gymnastics on Sunday morning.
Here’s a picture of the Dallas skyline as seen when coming back from Fort Worth:
Our hotel was very fancy as well.
We were supposed to party in that tower, but it’s being renovated so our party was relocated to a conference room. I remember going to the party, but sadly I don’t remember much after that.
Anyway, that was my trip to Texas. I can’t wait until the next time Robert Earl Keen is in town so that I can go back.
January 29th, 2008
I’ve had 2 Dell computers in my life. My last one, you may remember from the pictures I posted, had a rough encounter with a baseball bat after it’s motherboard fried. It seems the computer’s warranty had expired the previous month and then the motherboard fried.
So, I bought a new one. Well, it’ warranty was up about 2 months ago, and it just died. It’s been running non-stop for the last 6-8 months. When I powered it off to go on vacation, it wouldn’t power back on. Instead, I just get a blinking power light.
Maybe that’s why I bought a Mac. The problem is, I was doing most of my work stuff (including all my email and development code) on the Dell. I’d get another Mac for work if I didn’t need to use windows for work. I know there’s parallels, but then I can’t run any directx crap. I might have to use bootcamp I guess.
Has anybody else seen this problem? I’m not talking about the not powering up – I’m sure that’s a power supply issue and I had one overnighted to me so i can test it (stupid Dell and proprietary parts that my local computer stores don’t sell.)
I mean the computer having problems within 3 months of the warranty expiring. It’s happened to every Dell I’ve ever owned, as well as the 1 or 2 that my cousin has owned. My parents dell warranty is due to expire soon, so I guess I’ll see what happens to theirs.
January 29th, 2008
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