Black Friday Commeth

Black Friday is a week away. Cyber-Monday is the Monday thereafter. Few people know that the Wednesday after Cyber Monday is named "Innuendo Wednesday".

Irony Thick Enough To Cut With A Chainsaw

Slashdot: "Spring Design Sues Barnes & Noble Over Nook IP" Barnes & Noble has been sued by a company called Spring Design over the design of it's Nook book reader. Notwithstanding the hilarity that that generates (and it looks like Spring Design has a legitimate beef), Yahoo! is running a Kindle add underneath the story! But that's not all. Refresh the page and the next ad in rotation is a Barnes & Noble ad. I couldn't have made this up if I had tried!

Designing Obama

The Design Director of the Obama campaign, Scott Thomas, has collaborated with artists and designers to create Designing Obama, a chronicle of the art and design from the historic campaign. Get the inside story on how design was used by the campaign, and scope out the pieces, created unofficially, by grassroots supporters. The 360-page book is full-color and hardbound, highly crafted with an embossed sleeve and doubtless ships in a jewel-encrusted porcelain cask with winged angels atop.

What makes this doubly interesting (to me at least) is that it's a project funded by Kickstarter.com -- or rather a project funded by visitors to Kickstarter.com.

Kickstarter is a platform for all-or-nothing project funding. The project owner sets the value they they need to complete the project. Sponsors (you and me) pledge money. If the value set by the owner is met, the project is funded, you're credit card is charged and you get that for which you asked. If the project is not funded by the owner-set end date, nothing happens.

As of September 19 2009, Designing Obama has a target of $65,000, has 278 backers and $19,226 in pledges with 46 days to go. I kicked in $150 for the deluxe version of the book which includes my name printed as a "Gold Sponsor" (So I set my name up as "Colin Taumatawhakatangihangakoayauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukypokaiwhenuakitanatahu Bodell" we'll see what they do with that! (Source of the name is here;) (If you want to hear it pronounced, try here)

Sorry - Nuevo Laredo

Shot during 2 gigs during summer 2009. I used the audio from the first gig for the video. Stephen swapped out the audio with the studio recording from the RSVP ep.

The Clangers: The Intruder

Since there is not much to do on the Clanger's planet you'd have thought that they would have had the time to come up with a better name than "Baby Clanger".

All Hands All Over

All Hands is All Over. Wonderful experience. I certainly didn't imagine how much work would be needed to prep for the all hands when I agreed to do it. But worthwhile nevertheless. The organization behind the event was first class. Sadly I didn't get the chance to wield the sledgehammer...

Carousel Commercial - Adam Berg, Stink Digital

Just amazing photography and digital composting. I've watched this 20+ times this morning and with each viewing I see something new, either within the video, or a technique employed in its creation. Home of the video: Stink Video ; You should also visit Philips TV home where you can see the video in much higher resolution than on YouTube.

DD-WRT

Spent Sunday afternoon flashing my Linksys WRT54G wireless router with the DD-WRT firmware. Since I use the story of Linksys being compelled to release their router code to satisfy the t&C's of the Open Source license that governed some source code they used, I though I should walk the talk.

DD-WRT is a third party developed firmware released under the terms of the GPL for many ieee802.11a/b/g/h/n wireless routers based on a Broadcom or Atheros chip reference design. It exposes a ton of additional capabilities that are generally not available from the pedestrian firmware released by Linksys (Cisco) and others. Being able to nudge up the transmission power from the paltry 28mw to which the WRT54G defaults was of particular interest.

The DD-WRT wiki is very clear and the forums valuable for those minor questions not covered by the wiki. I must say, the upgrading process was very easy. I did have to hit the forums to figure out how to tweak the settings to optimize for Vuze (P2P client) but overall it was a breeze. Highly recommended. And yes - I'm now transmitting at 100mw - significantly improving bedroom-access while not melting the antennas...


[UPDATE 24 July 2009: See the DD-WRT Site for information about an exploit and to download the latest, patched, version. Also on the site is a firewall rule that blocks any attempt to access sth that has "cgi-bin" in the url.]

The New Rick Roll

Not much more I can say...

Conficker. April 1 Approacheth

Could be something, could be nothing. But do me a favor, download the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) and run it (quick scan will suffice in the majority of instances). You can read more about Conficker at the Microsoft Malware Protection Center. More juicy conjecture at Gizmodo.

If you are not behind a proxy server Conficker eye Chart for easy identification of systems possibly infected.

Something else lost

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

-- Neuromancer, WIlliam Gibson, 1984

And what will become of the image thus conjured when all the world's tv is digital? Unnecessarily backlit-black or kaleidoscopic random, swiftly stuttering and Lego-like? No faint observance of ghosts in the distance, of partially formed transient stories around which you add your own dialog but never concern yourself of the ending. Pixelation is a poor substitute for the monochromatic-spectrum and white noise of that which cannot be further from the definition of 'static'. And how does it feel to awake at 2:00am, lying on a sofa with the tv tuned to a dead digital channel? Can you awake?

I feel like a Military Academy...

...Parts of me keep passing out (goes the joke), however it's recently become more true - part of me is now in use by the Military.

"The US Department of Defense, which has been flirting with open source for years as a way to improve software quality and cut costs, has finally burst the dam on Defense-related open-source adoption with Forge.mil, an open-source code repository based on Sourceforge.

It's based on SourceForge Enterprise Edition for which I was responsible when I was running engineering at VA Software / SourceForge. Nice to know some part of me will be contributing to to military systems given I'm too old to be drafted.

The oobject of my lust

Oobject lists the top Gerry Anderson vehicles. The Captain Scarlet Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle (SPV) has to be my favorite. They drove that sucker while facing backwards. OK - I always wanted an RV based on the SHADO 2 Transporter and who could not want to fly in an Eagle transporter but it's the SPV that would satisfy my every dream. Missing from the list are Stingray and Fireball XL5 and all of the Thunderbirds sans deux. But otherwise I'm happy.

Comcast: Preemptive Apology

I ordered HDTV service from Comcast yesterday. Required that I spend 15 minutes on a "live chat" with a Comcast CS rep in India confirming all of the information I had just entered into their system - now that's efficiency for you. The e-mail I received from Comcast this morning is rather disturbing. They know they will be doing work to connect my HDTV service and they expect to have problems so they send me an apology ahead of time.... nice. I'd much rather that they get the installation right in the first place so they don't have to fix it and this preemptive apology would be moot....

Common Errors in English (Or Mistakes Commonly made in the English Language )

Bored? Somewhat of a grammar or language nazi? Common Errors in English will keep you occupied for hours and will certainly equip you with enough trivia with which to intellectually beat any opponent to a metaphorical bloody pulp. Submit your own!

Oh, and the one that drives me crazy? Ensure/Insure.

This makes me sad...

This is so scary as to border on the obscene (actually no, this *is* obscene):

Slashdot:

"Microsoft HR Chief Mike Murray cited religious beliefs for his decision to contribute $100,000 to 'Yes On 8', surprising coming from the guy who had been charged with diversity and sensitivity training during his ten-year Microsoft stint."

All I can say is that I'm glad I did not join Microsoft during Mike's time there --- he and I would not have gotten on very well...

Yahoo! Phisher Usings Yahoo! Mail to Phish for Yahoo! Mail Accounts

Ah the irony. A phisher using Yahoo! e-mail to phish for Yahoo! e-mail account information. The fact that Yahoo!'s spam system lets this type of e-mail through is truly astounding. Is no one paying attention at Yahoo! anymore? Seems like the volume of spam -- and very obvious spam at that -- that has been getting through Yahoo!'s spam filter of late has increased significantly.

Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock

Please prepare for the games to begin. This version adds "Spock" and "lizard" to the standard three. "Spock" is signified with the "live long and prosper" hand gesture, while "lizard" is shown by forming the hand into a sock-puppet-like mouth. Spock crushes scissors and vaporizes rock; he is poisoned by the lizard and disproved by the paper. Lizard poisons Spock and eats paper; it is crushed by the rock and decapitated by the scissors. Got that? Good. Ready, set go!