Tech Stuff Archive

I'm happy to report that Google has finally gotten around to adding directions for cyclists in Google Maps.

After a long wait and more than 50,000 signatures on an online petition, cyclists will be happy to know that Google has finally added bicycle routes to Google Maps.

In Google Maps, users can now find "Bicycling" in the tool's "Get Directions" drop-down box. After choosing the option, bikers can input two addresses and find the bike route that will get them to their desired destination. Like Google Maps' other modes of transportation, the mapping tool provides turn-by-turn directions and an estimated travel time.

The new Google Maps bicycling feature is available in 150 U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City. The tool boasts over 12,000 bike trails. When users look for directions, the company's mapping algorithm weights trails more heavily than roads for safety reasons. If cities have bicycle lanes, those are also weighted more heavily than roads without them.

I tried a few routes and got mixed results. The route from my house in Emeryville to where I work in Hercules put my on the Ohlone Greenway bikepath, which is awesome. However, plotting a course from Emeryville to Mt. Diablo has me going over Shepherd Canyon, which has about 20% grade at the top—probably not the best route for most cyclists.

It's in beta, so it's no surprise that it's far from perfect. I sent feedback into Google, as I suspect thousands of other eager cyclists will do. When Google Maps for Cyclists is ready, it's no doubt going to be a fantastic and incredibly useful tool.

I'm still not sure what I did or how I did it, but I managed to solve the problems I was having with my TV recognizing my newly acquired PS3, but it's working now. It's a serious relief because I didn't want to deal with getting my money back from the dude I bought it from (via craiglist)

I don't have any games yet, but I'm online and can stream Netflix movies. The first movie we watched was The Taking of Pelham 123. Not a great film, but entertaining enough. The selection on Netflix is on the small side, but growing.

The bluetooth DVD remote came in the mail today (via eBay), so I don't have to navigate DVD menus with the Sony game paddle, which is nice. I also picked up an HDMI cable (also via eBay) so I can connect at a better resolution.

I'm off to check out the PlayStation Network.

(Just after I got my console up and running, I saw this.)

I finally broke down and bought a PS3, only a few years after it came to market. Such an early adopter am I. I don't have any games. I don't even know if I'll buy any. I bought it for the Blu-Ray, as a media server (it has a 120GB hard drive) and to stream Netflix movies on my TV which is pretty cool.

However, I can't get the system to work. My TV won't recognize the console through the AV cables that come with the box. I searched the interwebs for a solution, but couldn't find any that worked, so I ordered an HDMI cable on eBay and I've got a call into Sony customer support, but it's really frustrating that it just isn't working. One of those two things better work.

Brazil is Número Um!

United States Dethroned: Brazil Reigns as World's Spam Capital

Brazil. The name alone evokes images of balmy beaches, bronzed bodies, or Bossa ballads. But beneath the veneer of this plastic surgery tropical paradise lurks an ugly, viral underbelly that's infecting the entire world. No, not that weird rash you noticed after Spring Break in Rio. We're talking spam.

Forbes reports today that Brazil has now overtaken China as the spam capital of the world. A report issued by Cisco's security division says that more than 7.7 trillion spam messages came out of Brazil last year, nearly triple their 2008 total. The U.S. took home the spam silver, with about 6.6 trillion messages, a marked decrease from their 8.3 trillion mark set in 2008. The good news is that China's spam production has seen a steep decline. Coming in at a distant 7th, The People's Republic was only responsible for 2.4 trillion spam e-mails, a full 25-percent drop from 2008.

...

Now they have something else to brag about besides the FIFA Rankings.

Here's The History of the Internet in a Nutshell which covers the origins of the Internet in 1969 to 2009. Obviously it's not comprehensive, but it covers all the high points. Quite a good read.

I made my first cycling map on BikeMap.net and I'm fairly happy with it despite a few minor faults. I like it for two main reasons. The first is that the terrain maps are beautiful. The second is that you get an embedded dynamic elevation profile when you post the map on your site. There's also location makers and the ability to add photos which is sort of nice. On the down side, the mapping tool is klugy and I had a real tough time getting the map to follow the road. I had to constantly switch back and forth between automatic, magnetic and manual, straight-line mode to get the map to cooperate. But in the end, I'm happy and I think the results speak for themselves.

So my day of skiing at Sugar Bowl, my first of this season, is in the books. It was a spectacular ski day, Mid 50s, sunny and not a cloud in the blue sky. The snow wasn't fantastic, but as it hadn't snowed in weeks, it was as good as you could expect. As long as we stuck to the groomed runs, it was fine. It was a perfect day for cruising, which is exactly what I like to do anyway, so I was really happy.

As promised, I brought my GPS along with me. I wasn't sure it was going to work from my jacket pocket, but it did, like a charm. The Garmin 705 has a feature which lets you record data for each lap so when I started, I would create a new lap every time I got back down to the lift. After a few rides up, I started a new lap at both the top and bottom of the lift so I get a better reading on how fast I was skiing. So starting at lap 8, you can see the lap that average about 8 mph—those are all the lifts. Lap 18 was a mistake, you can ignore that. Lap 23 includes part of lunch and can also ignored.

The remaining data is really interesting. Now Sugar Bowl, at least the part we were skiing, is not all that steep, and my average speed is somewhere in the 18-25 mph range. The GPS stops recording when my speed drops below 1 mph, but these averages include all the starting and stopping time on a run. On the faster runs, like lap #9 at 30 mph, I'm guessing I didn't stop.

For top speed, I hit 52.5 mph. My buddy Russell thinks this is way too fast—that I need a speed suit to get up that velocity. Perhaps. There were some steep short sections down at the bottom of Mt. Lincoln where I was cranking pretty hard. Seems fast, but the data doesn't lie*.

There are some really interesting things to look. Garmin has added a player to the their website.
You can really get a sense of my ski day by loading up the player. Because of the conditions, only a few runs were "skiable" and it really shows when you hit the play button and see us repeating the same lifts and runs over and over.

Another fascinating thing is that it's possible to export the GPX data from the Garmin and import it into Google Earth. Then you can adjust the camber on the view and get something like a 3D view of the mountain and the path we took on it.

It was a fun experiment and I'll try again on a day where I can ski anywhere on the mountain at a larger resort, maybe Squaw or Heavenly.

* except when it does

I've got to try this. Unfortunately, my GPS device doesn't mount on my wrist, it's meant to mount on my bike, but I'm going to try it anyway. I haven't yet been on the slopes this season. I was supposed to go today, but the trip was cancelled since I have to be here when my new washing machine gets delivered. A sure sign of getting old is giving up a day skiing to wait for the installation of a major appliance.

I've started Twittering like mad on this trip to South America. It's just so much easier than blogging here since I just send a text message to Twitter and they post it.

http://www.twitter.com/hechtic

The only problem with Twitter is that posts are limited to something like 140 charaters and since I have a tendency to be verbose, it's tough to limit myself to haiku sized chunks.

I'm sure there some sort of a Twitter widget that I can stick in the sidebar that will dynamically update whenever I post a new entry to Twitter. When I get a chance, I'll look for one and replace the someecards voting banner that I should have taken down after the election.

Having access to Google on my phone is as close to knowledge nirvana as it gets. Not only is Google Maps working here—I can track my progress on the map usuing GPS—but I can access Google Translate and use it to find out how things in Espanyol. So handy.

I have resisted getting an iPhone for a long time. Mainly because I have a pretty decent phone, a Blackberry 8820, but mostly because they were just so damn expensive. The prices have gone way down for the phone, but the monthly charges are still up there.

One amazing thing about the iPhone that the Blackberry doesn't have is a diaspora of developers writing killer apps for the phone. The one people in my office are always raving about can tell you name of any song that's playing nearby. Kinda cool, but I think I can live without it.

What I don't think I can live without is Path Tracks. Of course I can live without, but I don't know if I want to. Basically it taps into the GPS with the phone and plots your route on a map along with time, distance, speed and altitude. Very cool.

I already have two computers for my bike, so, you know, I don't really need it, but it is very cool, and if I had an iPhone, I'd definitely pony up the 99 cents to buy the software.

I just discovered the "Terrain" button on Google Maps. I don't know if this is new or not, but it's new to me. It delivers exquisite looking topographic maps which, of course, are interactive.

I've been meaning to write about this for a while now, but it's official: I'm a Mac guy.

I've always liked Apple. We had an Apple II back in the 70s, I used Macs (not my own) all through college to write papers. I did nonlinear video editing on a Mac (Media 100) back when I was making quicktime video highlights as part of my job as the producer of the World Sports pages for CNNSI.com. However when it came time to buy my first computer (1996, Computer City, Atlanta), I bought a PC clone. I had been buying PCs ever since. And I've been frustrated beyond belief and wanted to destroy every one of them.

I had never had my own Mac until recently. Now I have 3. Granted one is the iMac I use at work, and I still have 2 PCs, but I have 2 Macs at home.

One is a G4 desktop, which I don't use all that much. I'm working on upgrading it. Just upped the RAM to 1GB and bought a wireless card for it. It still runs OS 10.3 so I need to get a copy of Tiger (It won't support 10.5 since it's only 800 MHz).

The other is my 17" MacBookPro which I absolutely love. Sleek and shiny and almost never crashes, which is more than I can say for any PC I've had used. I put a lot of pressure on it by multitasking and running too many apps at the same time. Mostly the machine handles anything I throw at, but every once in a while, it craps out. It doesn't help that I have over 5,000 fonts installed. I'm just too lazy to deal with managing them.

I still run one of notebook PCs because there are some applications (Half-Life, Autostitch, etc.) that don't run on the Mac or I don't have their Mac equivalent. Every time I get on the PC, I'm reminded how crappy they are. I don't know what the problem is exactly, maybe some spyware or a trojan I can't detect or get rid of, but the system is so fucking slow to do anything. When the "flashlight" comes on repeatedly when you open "My Computer", you know there are real issues.

It's hard for me to imagine myself ever buying a PC again. There would have to be a radical sea change that I don't expect. Microsoft seems to be going in reverse when it comes to OS performance and quality while Apple, with a huge advantage to begin with, keeps getting better and better. More applications are being wirrten for the Mac as it chips away at the PC market share, which is fantastic. The only left to do is by stock in Apple.

I've had trouble with my iPod almost ever since I got it.

I bought back in 2006 just before my trip to Costa Rica and justified it by saying to myself that I would need a large hard drive to store all the pictures I was taking. This was the first trip I was taking with my digital camera (not counting Samoa) and didn't want to run out of storage. Having music along was just a bonus. Naturally, I never came close to filling up the couple gigs of compact flash that I brought with me. I listened to music some, but since I was traveling with a friend, we spent most of the time talking.

After I got back from the trip, I put the iPod away and didn't use again for months until I discovered podcasts, the perfect invention for someone who loves to listen to the radio, but hates to be a slave to the programming schedule. I was subscribing to dozens of podcasts, mostly NPR stuff, but some ESPN and various other indy casts. I'd take the iPod to the gym and and it would get me through some long workouts.

Then the thing started to crash. And crash and crash and crash. I would be listening to some music or a podcast and the fucking thing would shut down and restart. It would do it again and again and again. Sometimes after 5 minutes, sometimes after 5 seconds. This gets old pretty fast.

What kind of information technology user are you? Take the Pew Typology Survey and find out. Not a surprise to anyone, I'm a massive consumer of technology. My results are below the fold.

I can't remember the last time I made a mixed tape. For that matter, I can't remember the last time I owned a cassette player that could record. Must have been in high school and I need some serious hypnotherapy to remember most of what went on there.

But no matter. Don't need any of that analag shit to make a mixed tape these days. Just need Muxtape. It's as simple as you can imagine. Open an account. Upload MP3's. Share. When I get home tonight, I'll set one up and share it will ya'll. In the mean time, check out the Resurrection of Cool on Pandora if you want to hear some cool jazz.

To make your own digital snowflake. Whoever made this site is a genius.

I was recently asked about some of the work I did while at Electronic Arts so I started poking around the Internet Archive to see what was stored in there and I came across the site for NBA Street which I produced and my good buddy John Egan designed.

We had a great time putting it together, but we did it under a very tight deadline and with almost no Flash skill between us. 2 white guys (one jewish) and indian-Canadian marketing manager, Otis- the game was built in our Vancouver studi putting together a website for a hip=hop basketball game--crazy. It was a Louis Farrakhan nightmare.

It was fun, but stressful. I kept John at the office late into the night. I'd ply him food to keep him happy. I think a few nights in the final week he spent the night in his cube rather than go home to his SF apartment. This was 2001 in Silicon Valley. Post bubble, but still very heady in some corners of the Valley, like ours.

We never finished the site. the version linked here was completed in the months before September 11th and we were both laid off shortly thereafter. It's possible John might have left before. I can't remember. But the site had such great potential, despite it's lack of technical polish. If I built it today, it would be completely different. Instead of one large movie the user has to load in advance, there would be a movie for each section that loaded on an as needed basis. We would have a preloader that actually worked instead of that ball rolling across the screen which, in fact, does nothing. And we'd build it with an XML backbone so it would be easy to update. Regardless of that, it's still a fun site.

You know, we live in the digital age. We have so many options, so much media streaming into homes, digital cable, braodband internet, iPods, etc, so there's no reason ever to see something like this:

Due to rights restrictions, the ABC is only able to offer the audio stream of its Ashes coverage to users within Australia.

If you have come to this page it means you are trying to access the stream from an IP address which suggests you are outside Australia. However, via the Cricket Australia website, you can access the ABC Grandstand Cricket call of the action. But please note, there is a charge for this service.

Please note, it is possible that you have been referred to this page even though you are in Australia. If that is the case, it has occurred because your IP address - that is, your computer's Internet identity - is not registered as Australia. This could happen, for example, if you work for a company which sources its IT infrastructure from another country.

If this is the case we are unable to offer you access to the stream. We regret any inconvenience this may cause.

What makes it worse is that right now, Australia is chasing a modest total of 100 runs with 8 wickets in hand and 23 overs to be bowled on the 5th day of the 2nd Ashes Test in Adelaide. I think they're going to make it even though the Aussies are traditionally not great in the chase. With the wickets in hand, the number of overs to be bowled and Ricky Ponting at the crease, I wouldn't bet against them.

Sadly, with no radio feed to listen to and no TV coverage in the States, I'm reduced to "watching" written ball by ball by commentary. It's pathetic.

UPDATE I went around the Aussie firewall and found an ABC feed on Penguin Radio. Aussies are finishing strong. Time to kick back, crack open a Cascade, a Carlton or a XXXX and soak up the cricket, a rare pleasure these days.

UPDATE*Ponting out on 49, just short of another half-century. This could put the brakes on the Aussies inevitable march to victory. Damien Matyn coming to crease. Aussies need 52 to win at 116/3. I have a bad feeling. Martyn is fine player, but I can remember him letting the Aussies down back when I lived in Australia in the 93 Test series against South Africa. He couldn't hold up the tail and Fast Farnie de Villiers(10 for 123) scuttled Australia win 5 runs to spare at the SCG and tied the series -- Before I could finish writing this, Martyn is out. Amazing. Simply Amazing, Martyn out for 5 on 4 balls. 4 for 121. Aussies need 47 to win. Fookin' Amazin', mate.

UPDATE**Michael Clarke arrives at the crease having made a century in the 1st innings. Still 4 for 121. Are the Aussies about to collapse? The rate is 3.61. Not a hard ask, but the Aussies can't afford to lose to many more wickets or this is going to be a real nail biter. Who am I kidding? Thiis is a nail biter. It's rare to have matches this close. Rare for me, anyway. It's going to come down to the wire. It's hard to relax with Australian wickets falling all over the place.

UPDATE***Clarke's arrival has settled the Aussies down. Mike Hussey has brought up his second half-century of the match with 7 off the last over. It's going to take a monumntal collapse by Australia to not take a 2-0 series lead. 16 runs needs. 6 wickets in hand. 7+ overs remaing. It's all but over. This has been a very odd Test. England batted first and put up 551/6 declared. That's a huge 1st innings run total to eventually lose. The worst you'd expect is a draw. But with the Test in it's death throes, it looks like England's massive 1st innings (and Collingwood's double century) are going to be wasted. England started the day at 59 for the loss of one wicket, all but assured of victory, but they imploded and were bowled out for 129, scoring at barely a run an over. Warne was simply briliant, bowling 4 for 29, 12 maidens in 32 overs that included bowling double-centurian Collingwood for 2. The Aussies were set 168 for 37 and seem to on their way to making it. There will lots of disappointed cricket fans in England when they wake up in the morning. Aussies need 10 runs from 5 overs. You do the match. They'll probably manage it in 2 or 3. Seems inevitable at this point. I'm psyched at the impending Aussie victory, but even more so that I was able to listen to the final overs. I wish nothing more than I could be in Melbourne for the Boxing Day Test. It's hard to believe that I haven't been there in over 10 years.

UPDATE****Oh, no, the radio feed gone dead. I'm gone to miss the delerium at the Adeliade Oval. Fuck. Real Player is spitting out a hiigh pitched whine and it's freaking the cats out. Back to the written commentary, I suppose.

UPDATE****It's Over. Australia has done it. Here's the full scorecard, if you care, which I doubt. I know only one person who reads this sitewho gives one shit about cricket. Sorry, Phil. Better luck in Sydney. Here's how the winning runs were "broadcasts" on Cricinfo:

32.5 Anderson to Hussey, 1 run, that's it ... Hussey drives through extra cover and punches the air and jumps around as well he might. Australia, seemingly down and out after two days, have recorded a remarkable win. Handshakes all round, and the grinning Australians emerge from the pavilion to meet the hangdog English side at the boundary edge ...

Aussies by 6 wickets. Andrew to brush teeth, hit sack. G'night

Does anyone out there use Wikipedia? I think it's one of the most useful sites on the web and one of the most incredible. Not only is all this information available to you free and online, but it has been collected and continues to be collected by anyone who cares enough to add information and edit the content. It's 100% collaborative so anyone can post anytime, anytime from anywhere. There must be thousands of people contributing to keep it up to date and relevant. Probalby a few on staff too

If you think about anything you could possibly want to know, you can find an insane amount of information. You can search on your surname or the country you live in or your passion and find an incredible wealth of knowledge including vast amounts of external links to even more information. And if you can't find what you are looking for there, you can simply find it somewhere else on the web and add your own entry on your own topics that other people will update, edit and maintain. It's truly remarkable.

Congress must keep the Internet free and open by voting for meaningful and enforceable Network Neutrality--the Internet's First Amendment.

If you haven't been following this story, there's a movement afoot in Congress to end Net Neutrality in the United States which would essentially put a stop to the Internet as we know it by allowing broadband providers to discrimate access to those who are willing to a pay premium for services. This would end what many including me see as one of the essentials virtues of the Internet, that it is freely available and does not discriminate.

If you interested in preserving Net Neutrality, sign the petition.

Beware the dangers of email, a cautionary tale. The next time you're angry and want to flame someone, keep in mind, it lasts forever.

I've been in this indusutry as a web producer, content manager and web designer for most of the last ten years and today I'm finally going to my first industy confernece, Web Design World at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. I'm really excited about it. Three days of classes, speakers, seminars, workshops, presenations on web standards, typography, flash, photoshop, user interfacve design, flash and a whole lot more. The only trouble will be deciding which track to attend and which speakers to go see because there are so many interesting events happening simultaneously.

Let the learning begin.

I've had my notebook up and running for a while now. HP/Compaq was actually really good for a change about getting me a replacement hard drive (still under warranty) and I went through the tedious process of installing the OS, reinstalling every piece of software I own and restore all my preferences. It was relatively painless, except the part about the crashed hard drive.

There's about 34 gigs on the old HD. I don't need it all. It's mostly program files. But I do want some of the files, namely photos that I hadn't gotten around to backing up (such an idiot). I bought a little plastic 2.5" USB enclosure at CompUSA so I could try to pull some of the data off there, but it's been touch and go.

Sometimes the OS doesn't recognize the drive. Sometimes it does. Sometimes, it recognizes it, I can download files and right in the middle the connection drops for no reason. I think I need an enclosure with its own power source. I have to get down to Fry's to see what they have soon because I need to ship the drive back to HP lest they charge me for it.

Sorry about the lack of updates. My hard drive crashed, hard to believe with my sweet Compaq notebook, I know, but it happened. Details to follow.

I'm sitting here in a computer classroom in the city (SF) in the middle of the second day of my training for Adobe InDesign. I really have no idea what I'm doing here. My boss sent me to this class, but I have no real need for a page layout application for anything I do for work. It would have come in handy for the designing the Belly Dancer of the Year program, but it's not really necessary. I am learning a few global Abobe shortcuts that I missed out on because I'm self taught, and that's pretty cool, but the rest of this is mostly a waste of time.

But it is nice to have a change of pace and be in the city, such a huge change from Emeryville. There's so much going on here, so many people walking around, so many places to eat, things to see, distractions, whatever. It makes me think seriously about picking up and moving to SF once and for all. I've lived all around it, Burlingame, Oakland, Walnut Creek, Lafayette and Alameda, but now it might be time to move inside it.

Thanks to the incredible generosity of my online buddy Kelly in Virginia, I now have a Pro Flickr account which means I'm no longer limited to 100 pictures or three sets, at least for the next year. So I've got a lot of work to do, combing through my digital photos and scanning in film and slides (need to get a new scanner, too) to get my stuff online. Thanks, Kelly. You're the best.

Through the always interesting site of web designer Mike Davidson, I came across a new site called Our Media, which looks really promising. Here's a blurb from their mission statement:

Create. Share. Get noticed. That's what Our Media is about.

Our Media is a global community and learning center where you can gain visibility for your works of personal media. We'll host your media forever - for free.

Video blogs, photo albums, home movies, podcasting, digital art, documentary journalism, home-brew political ads, music videos, audio interviews, digital storytelling, children's tales, Flash animations, student films, mash-ups - all kinds of digital works have begun to flourish as the Internet rises up alongside big media as a place where we'll gather to inform, entertain and astound each other.

Sounds good, no?

Already I've found something I really like. I haven't seen music videos in ages, I don't even know where to go to find them these days. MTV? No. VH1? Nope. Our Media has got them though.

The featured video is from an artist named Sam Bisbee. Ever heard of him? No? Me neither. Doesn't matter. You should check out his "You Are Here" video.

Like I've said, I haven't seen a whole lot of music videos lately, so I don't know how revolutionary this one is, but I've never seen anything like it. The whole video is shot looking down at a coffee table while a pile of pictures, taken at short increments, is stacked (or sometimes removed) on the table. The effect is almost like looking at video, well, maybe like looking at video with every other frame removed. It's totally cool. And the music isn't bad either.

I'm not prepared to say whether or not Our Media and the power of the Internet is going to sweep Mr. Bisbee into the national consciousness, but I wouldn't be surprised. Check it out tell me what you think.

Good News. My new Lacie 250 GB Hard Drive arrived on Friday and I was able to completely recover all the files from the total meltdown that I had last week.

I used a program called EasyRecovery Professional which has to be one of the most useful pieces of software anywhere. Not only did EasyRecovery find all the missing files, most of which I could not find the other programs I tried, but it found over 520 gigs of info because somehow it is able to recover old, deleted files. So, the only problem I had with the program was to set up the filters in the right way so that when I dumped my files from my old drive to the new one, it wasn't overwhlelmed with deleted files that I didn't want.

Now all my movies, all my music and most importanly, all my pictures and personal files are restored and I won't have to deal with this again until hard drive number craps out on me.

Thanks to everyone who's written in with suggestion about how to recover the data from my personal hard drive Chernobyl. I tried some that didn't work. And I tired this program called GetDataBack and it was mildly successful, restoring something like 83 gigs of stuff. The problem is that there was over 230 gigs on the drive. That's just not good enough. I talked to one of the several computer geeks in the ski house and he assured that the program he has, which cost 600 bucks and was purchased at the best of one of his clients will be able to recover 100% of the files, so I have my fingers crossed. I bought a new drive to replace this piece of shit I have, and with any luck, I will have all my files back in the next week or so.

I'm having technological breakdown here. My external hard drive, my 250 gig external fucking hard has just stopped working. Yesterday it was exhibiting signs of an imminent crash. The drive was registering as "full", but some files weren't showing up. I tried to dig for them and the computer blue screened. Then when I brought the drive home and hooked it up to notebook, the drive would be there, but when I clicked to open it up, windows would ask me if I want to format the drive. FUCK NO I DON'T WANT TO FORMAT THE DRIVE.

So what can I do? I downloaded some file recovery software and it dutifully poured over the drive and found the files, but because the software wasn't registered (it was some trial version) it wouldn't actually recover them. I thought I'd wait to talk to Maxtor customer service, but they were totally useless when I called them this morning. I'll try again when I get home tonight, but I have little faith that I'm going to get all my files back.

Much of it, movies, music and other entertainment, is replaceable, but the pictures and the documents are not. I'm trying to be optimistic. I mean, shit, the files were mostly there yesterday, they can't just all disappear in an instant, can they? Well, they probably can, but that's the price we pay for living in the digital age.

I haven't been taking nearly enough pictures lately, mostly because my Canon 10D is too heavy and unwieldy to take everywhere. So I broke down and bought the ultra compact Canon S410. I got a sweet deal. I only paid 280 bucks including a 1GB Compact Flash card from some guy on eBay. It's brand new. It's tiny. I can take with me everywhere. I promise lots of new pictures.

I figured it was time to stop watching DVDs on my laptop, so I picked up my first DVD player (damn, I'm late getting in the game), a Philips DVP642. The thing is sleek and light and silver and plays DVDs on my TV, which is great. But because my TV is so damn old, I bought when I was living in LA back in 1998, it doesn't have AV inputs, so I had to buy an RF Modulator to make the connection. The picture is not super clear and there are visible lines running across the screen if you look closely. I don't know if this is the TV, the Modulator or the DVD player. I doubt it's the latter. One of the cool features of this DVD player, and the main reason I chose it over the thousands of other players out there is that it supposedly plays compressed Divx movies, which I happen to have a ton of. I was planning on chucking them out (deleting them actually), but if I can play them on my TV, then, fuck, I might just keep them around. And they do play, only with no sound, which sort of diminishes the whole movie watching experience. Hopefully it's just a minor glitch that I can fix with a call to Philips CS. I'll keep you posted.

If you have a blog, you've probably been hammered by spomments at one point or another. Even if you don't you'll love to read this interview, anonymous of course, with one of the spammers.

Don't be a victim of this petty marketing bullshit. Get your site protected with Typekey, MT-Approval or MT-Blacklist.

Ok, so I'm not really blogging from the shithouse, but I could thanks to my shinny new wireless router and a little help from Bill at D-Link customer support (I was frankly shocked not to be speaking to someone from Bangalore). Welcome to the 21st century.

The wireless network at the Tahoe house is up and running, so I now I can blog on the weekends. It's cool to have, but it's really strange sitting around the dining table with 6 or 7 other notebooks in action,

I came across the Terra Server this morning and it's like a new toy that I can't put down. I don't know why I'm so fascinated by this, but I can't help myself. I've been looking at old addresses like my childhood home (it's the u-shaped one on the right with gray roof and the swimming pool) and the place I live now (zoom out a few bars to see how close I live to SF. I've been looking at mountains, stadiums, the White House. It's very cool, not that the pictures are great or anything. Only certain urban areas have high res color shots. The rest is filled in with old black & white USGS survey pcitures, but even that's cool.

Here's some stuff I've been looking at:

San Quentin Federal Penitentiary, Marin, CA
Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles, CA
Mt. Rushmore, Rapid City, SD
Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, CA
The Grand Canyon
The Jefferson Memorial, Wasington, DC
The Pentagon, Arlington, VA
The Central Intelligence Agency, Langley, VA
Wrigley Field, Chicago, IL
Stone Mountain, Atlanta, GA
Beaver Creek Ski Resort, Avon, CO
Heavenly Ski Resort, South Lake Tahoe, CA
The Hearst Castle, San Simeon, CA
The Claremony Hotel, Berkeley, CA
The Astrodome, Houston, TX
Microsoft, Redmond, WA
Bill Gates' House, Medina, WA
The Playboy Mansion, Los Angeles, CA
The Hollywood Sign, Hollywood, CA
The Happiest Place on Earth
The Winchester Mystery House, San Jose, CA
Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, CA
The Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA
San Francisco Botanical Garden, San Francisco, CA
Stanford Stadium, Palo Alto, CA
The Rose Bowl, Pasadena, CA
Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles, CA
Memorial Stadium, Berkeley, CA
Husky Stadium, Seattle, WA
The Cottom Bowl, Dallas, TX
The Orange Bowl, Miami, FL
Mile High Stadium, Denver, CO

If you find some place cool, let me know.

Just testing out w.bloggar, a desktop application that lets you easily post to your blog. I actually used it when I was in Samoa, but I've had to reinstall it and configure it for the new host. Here goes the test.

UPDATE. It works, but it doesn't publish the category so I have to go in and manually publish it from the MT interface. What's the point of that?

If you have lots of free time on your hands and like to keep up with the blogs, you might want to consider checking out Bloglines. It's a free web-based service that's allows to manage all the blogs you frequent by subscribing to the RSS feeds. Like with your browser bookmarks, you can setup up folders and keep your blogs organized. Unlike a browser, however, Bloglines will tell you if there are any unread posts, and how many, so you don't have to check each page you read to see if it's been updated. You simply open Bloglines and all your blogs are laid out before you. It's genius.

It's a new year. Time to start fresh with a clean slate. So I spent a good chunk of time yesterday restoring my laptop. Mostly I needed to fix this nagging problem with the DVD+RW/CD-R drive which wouldn't recognize discs unless I put it in, ejected it and then put the disc back in again. Oh, and then there was that issue of not being able to burn discs. At all. So I shifted all my files to my external hard drive (what a godsend) and re-formatted and re-installed everything. I took a long time, but it's very satisfying to have the stupid piece of computing shit in working order again.

This morning when I came into the office there were 50 emails in my inbox, which is about 38 more than normal. What caused the increase? Comment spam on my blog. It's getting worse. It's out of control and there's no way for me to stop it, which is fucking annoying.

These new batch of comments, which are coming at rate of about 1 every 5 minutes this mornning are obviously computer generated. They all have email addresses like

medpqrs@adf3408dee3cebb3da27a1c0dc309b6a6.com

What are you supposed to do with that?

I can stop it from getting on my site, which is good, but to do so I have to keep this setup where I have to approve every comment (including my own) that goes on the site, which kills some of the spontaneous interactivity of blogging, but I have no choice. Meanwhile, for every "spomment" that comes in, I have an email to delete and an unapproved comment to blast into bits. It's becoming a daily ritual, again, fucking annoying.

I've been trying to get MT-Blacklist up and running but to no avail. It requires some plug-in to be placed on the server and since my blog has been piggybacking on a friend of a friend's server from the days when I set it up in Samoa. It's definitely time to get my own host. Anyone have any recommendations?

* * *

It really beggars the question, who are they trying to target? If there is a single blogger out there who would ever click on a link from a comment spam let alone spend any money there, I want to know who he is. I also want to know where he is, so I can hunt him down and strangle him.

Alameda actually has it's own Electric company, Alameda Power & Telecom, so I don't have to deal with Pacific Gas & Electric. They offer cable broadband service to most of the island, but not my part of the island yet. Figures.

So I have to go with dreaded Comcast with their notoriously over-priced poor service. I found some deals online that will save me some money in the first few months, but when the full price kicks in, it's going to be painful. I also got a free cable modem, with a mail-in rebate. We'll see how long that takes to fulfill. My experience with mail-in rebates (with everyone other than Canon) has been less than stellar.

Anyway, the cable people are coming tomorrow to hook up the TV and I should have broadband service in 8-10 business days, which means, if all goes well, some time next year.

Until this weekend, I hadn't bought a new computer game in years. When I worked for Electronic Arts, I had every game every made at my fingertips. I think the only game I bought when I was working there was Quake III, but I had to have it because we played together online after work all the time.

Anyway, the original Half-Life was such a sweet game (Game of the Year back in 1998) that when I saw Half-Life 2 for 40 bucks at Best Buy, I snapped it up. I've been waiting for this one for a long time. It was supposed to come out a few years ago, but has been delayed for various reasons. Now that's its here (and on sale) I had to have to it.

Well, if game play is the only measure, HL2 was certainly worth the wait. The graphics are beautiful. The environment is rich. The storyline in compelling. Everything about the game is fantastic. Except the setup. And first impressions are everything, right?

Electronic entertainment companies have been burned so badly by piracy that they are taking whatever measures necessary to ensure that their games are not duped and resold. If you buy a game from Valve, which means Half Life 2, then you have to deal with Steam.

Steam is the engine that is used to verify and run the game. In a word, it sucks. The first problem is that you have to be online to verify the game. I installed it, but I couldn't play until I managed to get online. This was such a disappointment. Long gone are the days of bringing home a game, opening the box, installing and playing in a matter of minutes. HL2 has 5 disks. Which means it took forever to install. That's okay because that means more game for me.

However, I don't (or didn't) have an account on my notebook at home, so I had to get an account (Netscape) and register online. Only a minor pain. Then I had to install Steam. Then I had to verify the game and download god knows how many files which took hours. There's a message on the website:

Product Authentication Delay When Installing Half-Life 2
Some consumers may experience delays in authenticating Half-Life 2 during the installation process. This is due to the high volume of consumers who have purchased Half-Life 2 and are installing the game, which is causing high traffic on the Steam authentication servers. Please inform any Half-Life 2 customers that encounter this situation to keep trying, as this is a temporary delay.

That's helpful. I don't know when they put that message up on their site (it's undated), but the game has been out for a few weeks so depending on your definition of temporary this is either not a big deal or a big deal. I tend to think the latter.

Anyway, then and only then could I play, but only when I was online. I can't play the fucking game unless I'm attached to the Net. I try to start the game and get this infuriating message that says, "The operation cannot be completed when Steam is in offline mode." Well, fuck you, too. There's a way to do it and I talked for a long time with a nice young lady in tech support (an Indian, big surprise) who told me what to do, but, alas, it did not work.

There's no information about it on the so-called Half Life 2 Knowledge Base

Now, I'm pissed because I can't take the game back. The stores won't accept it because once the game has been installed once, you cannot install it on another machine. Which also means that I can't sell it. That's seriously fucked up. That's always one of the things that I can tell myself before I buy a game. I'll buy it, but if it sucks, I'll turn around and throw it up on eBay. That is no longer an option.

I honestly don't know what to do about this. I can write a letter to complaints@vugames.com, but what's the point of adding another email to huge digital pile that must be amassing on their servers? At some point I'm sure I'll be able to figure out how to play offline but what a enormous fucking hassle this has turned into.

I'm towards the end of the process of removing tables (except where intended such as tabular data) from my site converting American Idle over to a CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) Design. My site is a very complicated mosaic of multiple blogs and I have close to a 1000 entries so it's tedious process, but the end is in sight.

Why am I doing this? The basic idea of CSS Design is that the substance of the site, the entries and the information, and the style of the site, how it looks, are separated completely. The great advantage is that once the meat of the site is removed from the style, it's very easy to change the look and feel of the site because one cascading style sheet controls everything about the site from what fonts you use to where information is placed.

To see how this works, have a look at my site without a style sheet applied. This is simply the blog in its rawest form. In the future, without too much effort, if I want to give my site a facelift, all I need to do is compose a new stylesheet which is far easier than going into every document and finding places where changes need to be made.

Since I'm in the middle of this process, the site is in a state of flux, so if you see something weird, don't worry, I'm probably just testing something new. However, there might be problems that I'm not aware of so if you see something straight-up wrong, just email me and let me know.

If you really want to see this in action, check out the CSS Zen Garden

Applied Digital Solutions got medical clearance from the FDA for their VeriChip and the stocked has jumped almost 40% in a few hours. I'm not just mentioning this since I own stock in the company.

I think VeriChip and Digital Angel are very cool, albeit a slight bit Orwellian. Digital Angel has been used in pets for medical and security reasons for a while now and it's going to be a great tool for identifying people in the years to come. Whether it will become universal or not is anyone's guess. I'm sure there will be mega-resistance from the loony left and maybe even the right, but the future is here and you can't stop progress, or so they keep telling me.

Just down the street from where I'm sitting at Chiron in Emeryville is the corporate offices of Pixar. Yes, that Pixar. Monsters, Inc. Finding Nemo. Infinity and Beyond. and Steve Jobs.

There's a interesting article in one of the local papers about how a small group of citizens in Emeryville is strong-arming the animation studio that wants to triple the size of its corporate campus.

It's sort of a reversal of fortune for Pixar which has been used to running roughshod over local authorities. So what's the beef of these local citizens? Well, apparently Emeryville has created so many jobs by being "business-friendly" that they haven't been able to keep on the housing front (this despite Emeryville creating more affordable housing than its neighboring cities).

Just when you thought people had nothing more to complain about, they complain about having too many jobs. Power to the people, baby!

a free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners around the world. OCW supports MIT's mission to advance knowledge and education, and serve the world in the 21st century. It is true to MIT's values of excellence, innovation, and leadership.

What does this mean? Well it means you can access the material for over 900 MIT courses--FOR FREE. So while you're not going to get a degree from MIT, you can access almost all the knowledge available to the students who are paying 30 grand a year for the priviledge. How cool is that?

Find out more at the MIT OpenCourseWare site or view the complete course list

I just got this email from someone claiming to be from eBay:

Dear eBay Customer,

You have received this email, because we have indicate that someone
had used your eBay account more than fifteen times today from different hostnames:

ool-43500aa7.dyn.optonline.net
061238117002.ctinets.com
r50h4.dixie-net.com
bgp477700bgs.summit01.nj.comcast.net
ip67-153-93-156.z93-153-67.customer.algx.net

In this way we have only to think that your account password is stolen.
We have delete your payment information (Card on File) for your security reasons.

Please follow the link below and login to our system to change your password.

http://signin.ebay.com/ws2/eBayISAPI.dll?SignIn&ssPageName=h:h:sin:US

If you think that is a normal for your account, please disregard this message.

Regards,
Kathrine Smith,
eBay Inc.

Could this true? Sure, why not. Stranger things have happened to my account. The email address is from eBay. The link seems to be from eBay. Yet, I sense scam. Maybe it's the "We have delete your payment information (Card on File) for your security reasons." The message and grammar are both disturning. eBay would never send an email like that, would they?

Curious, I clicked on the link. It asks me to login. I do. Then there's a page that asks for, amongst other things, a credit card number and my social security number. I don't remember giving eBay my SSN, but I signed up a long time ago. I closed the window. Opened eBay.com. and changed my password immediately. It's insane that I have to do this every few weeks, but I have to because my virtual identity is at risk because of problems with eBay security.

Then I decided to call eBay (Phone: (408) 376-7400). They don't have anyone by that name listed. The email is a "spoof". You just have to shake your head.

Ok. So it's not really free, but it's not a scam either. You have to jump through some hoops, give up some personal information and sign up for some free trial (which you can then cancel at no charge), but you DO get a free 20GB iPod. It's worth a little hassle, don't you think?

If you don't believe me, you can read all about it Wired Magazine's article, Making Free IPods Pay Off

Just to go www.FreeiPods.com and sign up.

I registered with an email address that I never use so I don't get spammed and I signed up for the Ancestry.com 14 day trial period which I'll be cancelling next week, thank you very much.

Ok, so they are having some trouble getting their IPO aprroved, but they are big into the spirit of the games. You have to love it.

I don't care who you are or what you do, but you can't help be impressed by the images that are coming back from Cassini. They are awesome. They are beautiful. They are also very expensive.

If you think your digital camera is expensive, it's nothing compared to what we spend on these interstellar photographic missions. I'm not saying it's not worth it. At some level, we have a responsibility to explore our world, it's just something to think about.

My new computer from Compaq came this week, way ahead of schedule. It's a far greater machine than my previous notebook, 80GB hard drive, 2.2 GHz Athlon 3400+ processor, DVD+RW built in, 15.4" widescreen, just to name a few feature upgrades. So despite not wanting to ever have to deal with Compaq/HP customer service again, I'm keeping it because I don't want to deal with the hassle of selling and then buying a new notebook. It just seems easier this way.

This PC also has a built in wireless ethernet card, which is really cool. I can take it to the coffee shops around the Bay Area (and there are many) that have WiFi networks and while away the hours on the net. That's pretty sweet. However, I have also discovered that the card picks up and connects me to a WiFi network in the one of the nearby apartments. The signal is "Very Low", but the connection speed which varies from 2 Mbps to 54 Mbps is far faster than dial-up, and I don't have to tie up the phone line while I surf the net.

So the question is, should I feel guilty about leeching onto to someone's WiFi network? It's not like I'm hacking into their PC and poking around their hard drive.

After months of struggle with HP/Compaq "customer service", they have finally given in and are going to send a new notebook computer to replace the lemon that I purchased. It's coming in 8-10 business days and it's coming direct from their factory in China.

I've learned one important thing from this ordeal and that is I never want to do business with HP/Compaq again. When the computer arrives, I'm going to sell it immediately and buy a Dell. Why?

HP/Compaq put me through hell, that's why. I shouldn't have to beg, cajole, scream, be without my computer for weeks on end, be lied to, accept guarantees that are rescinded, be told that my computer is out of warranty when it’s clearly not, have it returned from service with the same problem, then beg, cajole, and scream again to have a working computer.

Certainly not all computers will work perfectly when they arrive however this company and any company should stand behind their products and fix or replace them immediately when there's a problem without forcing their customers to navigate hierarchies of CS scattered all over the world from India to Canada.

Clearly I made a mistake purchasing an HP/Compaq in the first place. It’s a mistake I’m not likely to make again in my lifetime.

Yahoo has jacked up their email service with a new look and mailbox sizes of 100 megabytes. For years I've been finesing my mailbox, trying to keep the size down below the 6 meg threshold. It was a constant struggle. But it was healthy because I had to constantly go in and pare down my inbox, throw away old junk and generally keep up to date.

Now I won't need to do that until I amass 100 megs of emails, which could be a long time. But by that time, I will have so much email it will be an overwhelming gargantuan task. On the other hand, it's going to be awhile before messages people send me get bounced for lack of space.

I don't even know why I keep most of the crap I do. It must be some sick sentimentality, but when will I ever get a chance to reread it?

Well it's not really a war. It's not even a battle. It more like a fight you have with your sister. You know the one. You piss her off and she gets back at you by not talking to you. That's right, The Silent Treatment.

So I can't tell if Compaq is angry with me (for buying one of their defective computers no doubt) or is just plain incompetent. How many voice mail messages can you leave with the promise of a return call within 2 hours during regular business operations before you assume the worst when your call is not returned?

For my part, all I want is simple. I want them to replace the lemon they sold me with a new laptop so I can turn around and sell it to someone else which wiill allow me to buy a computer from a company that actually can make a computer that works the way it is supposed to. Someone like Dell.

I don't even know what possessed me to buy a Compaq in the first place. It must have been the thin air in Colorado. Anyway, the poor thing is in the shop at the moment, for god knows how long, and I have no hope that they are going to replace it or even fix it.

After weeks of struggling with my old Dell notebook, I finally succumbed and picked up a new pc. It's really nothing special. It's a Compaq Presario 2500, not state of the art or anything. It doesn’t have a few things that I really needed. First of all, it only cost 800 bucks including shipping (I bought it on Ubid). Second it has an integrated firewire port so that I can easily use my external hard drive. Third, it has 512 MB of RAM and it handles massive Photoshop documents with ease. It doesn't have a floppy drive which makes it difficult to get files off my notebook onto Lilla's computer which has Internet access. All in all I'm happy to have it and be up and running again.

My computer is on and off again working. It's driving me nuts. There are so many things that I need to use it for, not the least of which is adding images to this website.

At least I have the main hard drive partitioned so that I can install my applications on the 'D' drive and when the OS crashes, I can just reformat the 'C' drive. It's a pain in the ass, but as long as it saves me from shelling out about a grand for a new notebook, I can live with it, at least until I get a real job.

So I thought I had everything working with the Dell, more or less. I had XP on there which is a memory hog and runs slow on my notebook, but at least it runs. I could access my external hard drive. I could read my CF card to get my pictures. There were some program issues, like Photoshop not wanting to install, but for the most part, everything was hunky dory.

Then it all came unraveled in the most peculiar way.

My computer problems have continued ceaselessly and I fear that my 5 year old intrepid Dell Inspiron 5000 notebook that made the trek all the way across to the South Pacific Top Samoa and back is about to be relegated to the laptop graveyard. The problems started back about 3 weeks ago when I was still in Sedona and the computer wouldn't start. I ordered a new power cord, cracked open the notebook (literally, because I busted the case when I tried to open it) and digged around inside to find the problem.

Sprint runs a communications center at the top of the Eagle Bahn gondola where I am now trying to thaw out my little toes. Internet connection is super fast and, best of all, it's free. So you can expect daily reports from the top of the mountain.

The weather is complete crap today. It's about 20 degrees and there is no visibility. It's not exactly the kind of day that screams, "group portrait". So instead of taking pictures (and making money) I've spent most of the moring skiing and getting to know the mountain, which is massive.

It's great skiing on a day like this because even though it's cold, windy and snowy, the trails are full of powder. The problem for me is that I'm in horrible skiing shape which basically means that one run down the mountain releases enough lactic acid in my thighs to make me want quit and head home. I'll be in shape in a few days, but meanwhile my skiis are chattering all over the place. It could be worse. I could be where you are. :)

I've done my good deed for the year and migrated my friend Rachel from the dark side of Blogger and into the bright, shinning light of Movable Type. I installed the files for her and built her templates. She's either a) living in a dream world b) lucky to have a friend like me or c) lucky to have a friend like me with nothing better to do with my time.

Please stop by her site Notes From a Broad about her life as a student in Senegal and make her feel welcome. Thanks.

This is the message on the Blogshares home page:

BlogShares - Closed Down

Dear BlogShares players,

I am sorry to announce that BlogShares will not be reopening after the current technical difficulties are resolved. Currently, the database server is dead and looks to be for the next few days.

The latest system crash has highlighted to me that deliverying a fun, useful service for the BlogShares community requires an active operator and developer. As most of you are no doubt aware I've been neither for the past couple of months. That has led to a decline of quality service, new features and ultimately income for the site and it looked likely that there wouldn't be enough to pay for next month's hosting.

It's been an interesting and very rewarding nine months bringing a bit of entertainment to bloggers (and blog lovers). I'd like to thank especially all those people who donated money or their valuable time, those who became premium subscribers, those who worked on cool toys which made use of the fledgling API and all those who could be found on the forums and IRC channel. You turned a silly fun idea of a mad monkey coder in London into something worthy of the attention by thousands of bloggers and the press.

A special mention goes to Greg, Jay, Erika, Joe, Aine, James, Ashes, Morgaine, Patrick and Rob.

My goal with the project was always to embrace the power law and to provide a new way of highlighting blogs with a little bit of fun. I've been pleasantly surprised of how well it did and stupefied it did it for so long. Now, however, it is time to move on to other things. I'm sure you'll be hearing from me in the not so distant future. You can also find me at my perpetual home: monkeyx.com.

All the best,

Seyed Razavi.

I had a great time with Blogshares. I'm sorry to see it go.

I finally got my mom's wireless network running. The last hurdle was being able to print from the laptop to the HP printer that's hooked up to the desktop. It was a monumental pain in the ass. At first I would print. The print job would be sent to the printer and out would come a blank page. This happened about half a dozen times before I discovered the solution. Sometime after midnight, I managed to get a test page printed.

This whole endeavor has been a hassle because the desktop runs Winows 98 while the laptop has Windows XP. It wouldn't be such a big deal except I don't know shit about XP, or networking for that matter. For a long time, the issue was that the desktop could see the laptop, but not vice-versa. I don't know exactly how I solved it. Some combination of removing and adding network components did the trick.

Then there was this whole printer thing. I couldn't get the right drver installed because XP isn't that smart. I had to trick it by installing a dummy printer with the right driver and the applying that driver to the network printer.

The thing is, this whole procedure would be relatively simple if Microsoft had some competition and was fored to make an operating system that actually works the way it's supposed to. Good thing the Bush Administration is all about busting monopolies and taking on big business to the benefit of the little guy, such as myself. I breath easier knowing they are behind me. I bet you do too.

Discord at digital divide talks

Looks the folks who are meeting in Geneva to discuss the ever widening "Digital Divide". The main problem, as always is "over who should pay for technology projects in the developing world. " The answer is always rich, industrial countries, so I don't exactly see what the problem is.

Developing countries will be never be able to afford to build the infrastructure, let alone provide the hardware to get people online. It's no brainer. If you want to make it a reality, the wealthy, industrialized countries are going to have to dig deep.

A bigger problem, at least from what I see here in Samoa, is that government policy tends to be counterproductive towards to goal of getting people onto the Internet. Samoa has a national IT policy with a vision of having everyone in the country connected. However, SamoaTel, the goverment sbsidized telecommunications giant has a 5-year monopoly on internet connectivity, which removes competition from the marketplace and makes it difficult for many people to afford online service.

If you've been scammed on eBay, as I have, you'll find this story on MSNBC really interesting.

I had my indentity stolen a few months back and it was a really unpleasant experience. You can read about it here. Also, the first time I tried to buy my new camera, the auction turned out to be fake. It wasn't too hard to discover the ruse, when the seller tried to change terms of the auction after I won. I alerted eBay and they shut the perp down. But I'm sure he'll be back.

eBay should be doing a far better job informing the public of the nature of the problem. But they won't. They won't because they are afraid to admit the extent of the problem. It's like in Fight Club when Edward Norton's character is talking about automobile recalls. There is a formula the companies follow. Basically if the cost of the recall is more than not doing one, they don't do the recall. So far, the damage done to eBay's image isn't great enough for them to step up and take some responsibility. It's really sad how corporate America works. It makes me ill.

EBay thief reveals tricks of the trade
Bob Sullivan, MSNBC, Sept. 24. He contacted me to brag, this e-mailer named Kenneth. Said he had seen a story I'd done called 'True confessions of an eBay criminal,' about a 15-year old who managed to steal a few thousand dollars online. And Kenneth was offended. 'He's an insult to each and every one of us scam artists,' Kenneth wrote. 'I could tell you stories.' And so he did. Kenneth claims he's spent the past two years as one of eBay's most notorious scammers.

I don't really have worms. I've got one worm. Something called the W32.Welchia.Worm has infected my computer and I don't know what to do about it.

The worm starts uploading information as soon as I get online. This wouldn't be such a big deal except that in Samoa, Internet accounts are charged by the Megabyte and by the hour, and it's slowing my already tortoise-like conection down to standstill.

When I realized I had a virus of somesort I downloaded Ad-Aware to remove any spyware that could be trying to send massive amounts of data from my machine over the net. This didn't do anything but delete a few useless cookies.

Then this afternoon, I went over to a friends office to install the latest version of Norton Anti-Virus (2003) which is how I discovered the worm. But Norton can figure out how to delete it.

I'm goinging through the documetion online right to see if I can find a solution and get rid of this nasty little parasite. Any suggestions greatly appeciated.

***update***
It looks like Symantec has a "tool" to disable and remove the worm. I'm going to go download it and see how it works for me. Wish me luck.

I recently helped another PCV (Jim in Pokhara , Nepal) put a COS (Close of Service) countdown on his site. I don't know why, but its fun to help out other volunteers with their sites. Just being in contact with volunteers around the world is pretty damn cool.

You can find Jim's site here:

Jim Lengel's Peace Corps web page

This is so cool I hardly know where to begin.

(Hey folks, these guys are for real, with some significant film credits to their name (see at bottom for details) and they're working on a documentary film about the craigslist community - it'll be good to tell the everday story of craigslist, and should be fun. thanks! /Craig)

Greetings from Zealot Pictures.

We’re making a movie about craigslist -- or rather, we're making a movie out of craigslist.

We’re going to take one day, Monday, August 4th, 2003, and make a documentary based on the CL postings from that day. Not just the "Best-Of" or the "Success Stories", but a real, down-to-earth look at the fastest-growing grassroots cyber-community in the city that started it: San Francisco. Personal ads, job listings, missed connections, homemade helicopter sales, transgender counseling - everything that moves through the flow of the city's consciousness within a single 24 hour period. There is no script and no agenda other than what the community itself creates on that day, and postings will be followed up to their logical conclusions-- days, weeks or perhaps months afterwards. Stories within stories, worlds within worlds, unforeseen connections and unpredictable encounters across all strata of society-- it all comes together in "24 Hours on Craigslist."

Here’s how it’ll work:

On Monday, August 4th, a box will appear as you make your post. If you would like to participate in the film in any way - going on a date you met on CL, giving an interview about that great job you found, selling your blender, renting your apartment, or even anonymously - just click the box and your posting will be sent to us. We’ll then contact you and set up a time for our film crews to come and meet with you (and perhaps whoever responds to you as well). Don’t be shy, we want to get a bit of everything that happens on craigslist - and we do mean everything.

"One day. One City. One website. No limits."

I came home this morning, turned on my computer and all I got was a little flashing cursor in the top left corner. No BIOS, no operating system, no nothing.

There a very few things as disturbing as a non-working computer. It's not my sole source of entertainment, but pretty damn close. Music, movies, writing, photography. Plus I need to feed my insatiable Freecell addiction.

I didn't have a startup or a boot disk in my house, so I'm going to try to download one right now in the Peace Corps office. If I can't get the computer up and running again I might have nervous breakdown.

Blogging is about to get a mainline of adrenalin when AOL launches its "AOL Journals", a blogging too for the masses.

If it doesn't already seem as if everyone who has an (in)coherent thought and access to the Internet is online publishing their memoirs, now all the blue-haired contract bridge playing AOL weenies who couldn't navigate their way to blog*spot will be in there jamming up the Internet with their ramblings.

Why should I care? Good question. I don't really know, but for some reason it bothers me.

Rowing Upstream
Snapshots of Pioneers of the Information Age in Africa

I came across a link to this book about ICT in Africa when surfing other blogs. The entire book seems to be online. It's got some really amazing pictures and is loaded with information about the past, present and future of Information Technology on the Dark Continent.

Check it out.

When people take antibiotics, good bacteria are often killed along with the disease-causing ones. This leaves yeast, such as Candida which is not affected by antibiotics, to grow unrestrained, proliferating and overrunning the intestinal tract. The consequence is a yeast overgrowth or infection. Such infections can last for years causing a wide variety of symptoms ranging from headaches to digestive problems. Often people have systemic Candida infections without even knowing it. This is why antifungal medications or probiotics should be taken whenever antibiotics are used. A probiotic supports the growth of friendly bacteria but not the disease-causing kind. Tropical Traditions recommends Primal Defense for probiotic supplementation.

One of the good things about lauric acid, which makes up about 50% of the fatty acid composition of coconut oil, is that it kills lipid-coated bacteria but does not appear to harm the friendly intestinal bacteria.1 The MCFA (medium chain fatty acids) also have antifungal properties so not only will they kill disease-causing bacteria and leave good bacteria alone, they will also kill Candida and other fungi in the intestinal tract, further supporting a healthy intestinal environment.

Why am I writing about this, you might be asking yourself. You doubt I'm sincerely delivering an island remedy for my female friends, and you'd be right. I'm writing this because this is the latest "message" I've received from a new scourge of pop-up ads from "Save!" that have somehow infected my machine. I don't know where they came from or how to get rid of them. Fucking parasites.

The War on Spam has officially begun.

I'm not talking about the pink meaty stuff, though someone probably should do battle with the people at Hormel. I' talking about the tons of asinine emails that fill up your email box everyday. If Bill Gates has his way, and he usually does, Spam will be a thing of the past.

In a letter on the Microsoft website, Gates details the scourge of spam, claiming it's ridiculous that he should receive emails offering get rich quick schemes or plans to get out of debt. Of course, it's also funny as shit (if you want to see exactly how funny, look at the Bill Gates Wealth Clock.

The plan is to "Stopping Spam At the Source" and "Bringing Spammers into the Sunshine" by instituting a system of email verification. Microsoft is also creating new anti-spam technologies, working to prevent spammers from creating fraudulent accounts, and working with US legislators seeking to strengthen the ability of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to sue spammers on behalf of their customers.

God knows if any of this will work. Spammers have proven to be a clever lot.

I know you've always wanted one, now you can buy a Segway direct from Amazon (not that Amazon needs a plug from me or anyone else). It's the perfect transportation solution for the geek on the move.

Last month I wrote (jokingly) about the Segway as the ideal mode of transportation for poor Peace Corps volunteers stranded in distant lands with no automobiles. As if riding around with bike helmets isn't enough of a stigma, you can just image hordes of PCVs crusing around town on their high tech, slow moving scooters. What a perfect way to blend into the culture.

Now you can order them from Amazon who will even provide training after they deliver your scooter (in four weeks).

All this for less than 5 grand. What a steal!

I've been screwing around with Beatnik all day. It's kinda of fun. Downloading the plugin is a bit of a pain in the ass, but the end result is more than worth it. Beatnik are the only people delivering high quality sound without an insane download.

I wish I brought my Beatnik software with me so I could make my own .rmf files for the background music instead of relying on what's already out on the web. I might just kill it anyway if the music becomes too much of a distraction. I'll just stick with the mouse over sounds in the nav.

Check out Beatnik at beatnik.com

I'm back. I have not been abducted by aliens. I wasn't locked in a Samoan prison camp. I didn't fall into a coma. Nor did I suffer from temporary amnesia. Temporary insanity, yes. Amnesia, not quite.

So what happened?

Since April 28th, I have been locked out, frozen solid from my Yahoo email account. I've got to tell you, this has been one of the most frustrating experiences of my life and I hope never to have to repeat it.

I'm sorry if you were worried or confused that I didn't respond to your emails. It wasn't anything personal. I just couldn't. Here's what happened.

I came into the Peace Corps office on Monday morning, April 28th, after spending all weekend riding my bike around the other island. The big one. Savai'i.

I had taken tons of pictures and I was going to send this great email about the trip (still will, but later). But when I tried to log onto my email account in the office, I got a message saying "invalid password".

Not a big deal. I get this all the time. I can't really type and, since I tend to try to do things too fast, I always mistype my password. I try again. Same result. And again. Same result. I check the Caps Lock. It's off. I start scratching my head while I restart the computer. Surely, that will solve the problem. Who are we kidding here? Doesn't that solve every computer problem?

Remember "Ginger"? Do ya? Let me refresh your memory.

"Ginger" was the over-hyped invetion by the wacky genius Dean Kamen. Ginger has been marketed as "the Segway", the evolution in mobility.

Why am I bringing this up to you now, you might be asking. I was talking to another Peace Corps Volunteer about our transportation woes. The rule about not being able to drive a car or a motorcycle makes getting around something of challenge. Then I remembered "Ginger."

How perfect would this be? Legions of Peace Corps Volunteer lending a helping hand to developing nations and getting around by means of the snappy looking "Segway." It's the transportation solution for the new generation.

Yesterday I got a frantic call from Father McGuire, the principal of Chanel College. He's got the computer room ready, all wired for 20 PCs, but half of them aren't working. I said, tell me what the problem is. He said, when the computers start up, there is an error message. I said, don't worry, just follow the instructions, hit F1 and everything should be fine. He said, OK, but can you come up here anyway and have a look. I said, no problem, I'll be there in 45 minutes. I'm thinking, how did I get myself into this. Good question. How did I get myself into this?

After 5 days of trying, I still am unable to get into my Yahoo! Mail account. I've been writing them every day, multiple times. I have appealed to their heart by mentioning, multiple times, that I am a Peace Corps Volunteer and email is my main source of communication with friends and family back home. I wrote letters to Terry Semel, the CEO and Jerry Yang, Chief Yahoo! and founder. Still, I have yet to get a response back from an actuall human being. It makes me think there are no human beings at Yahoo!

I don't know what is going on, but ever since yesterday, I can't access my Yahoo! email account. This wouldn't be such a tragedy except all my email addresses are stored in there. Yahoo is being very uncooperative because of their safety and security policy.

There is a password retrieval function on their site, but you need to know both the zip and the second email you had when you signed. I've had this account for at least 7 years and I haven't the foggiest idea where I was when I set it up.

I guess I'm screwed untill I can convince Yahoo that I am who I say I am. In the meantime, if you want to write, email me at hechtic2@yahoo.com

This is an old story, but I came across it today, and it's just too funny not to pass along. File it under Scandavians With Too Much Time on Their Hands.

Pigeon-powered Internet Takes Flight

By Stephen Shankland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

One of the Internet's most obscure technologies came to life last weekend: transmitting network information by carrier pigeon.

In 1990, David Waitzman wrote RFC 1149, a tongue-in-cheek standard for using pigeons to transfer information using the Internet Protocol (IP). On Saturday, a group of Linux enthusiasts in Bergen, Norway, succeeded in exchanging some data using the Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol (CPIP).

The group transmitted a "ping" command, among the most basic operations of the Internet, in which one computer sends a signal to another, which in turn signals that it is attached to the network. In the experiment, packets of network data were printed on paper then attached to pigeons' legs. Upon their arrival at the destination, the data was transferred to the computer using optical character recognition software.

MORE...

I just signed up for an online course, Development and the Internet, that is being run by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. It should be extremely interesting and I'm really looking forward to the readings. Plus it's free, and as we all know, offering freebees to a Peace Corps Volunteer is like giving dope to a junkie.

My little notebook computer finally hit the skids over the weekend. The breaking point came with the attempted installation of a PCMCI card to read my memory stick. The OS found the new hardware and installed it, but on the restart, the piece of shit collapsed. All I got was some inexplicable input/output error. I couldn't get to the fricken' desktop. The thing was hosed.

The solution, long in coming, was to upgrade to Windows 2000. There only reason I waited this long was that I was afraid I was going to lose some applications and some of my files, especially all the Samoa pictures (1500+).

Today I got to ride down the Lefaga Junior Secondary School in the far Southwest corner of Upolu. The mission: Meet with the pule (principal) to discuss their computers. The problem: I arrived at the school and no one was there. No teachers. No students. No janitors. And. most importantly, no pule. I'll try again next week.

The deal is that I am taking over a SPA (small project assistance) grant that another PCV, KellyAnn Roberts, had set up for the school. When KellyAnn departed Samoa prematurely, I stepped up to fill her role.

It seems as though the problem with my notebook computer is that it's running in something called "MS-DOS compatibility mode", whatever the heck that means.

I ran the Dell Diagnostic on the system and the BIOS is reading the DVD-ROM. But for some reason the OS is not.

When the problem first came up, I removed the driver, thinking that when I rebooted, Windows would find the "new" hardware and reinstall it. It did not.

I went online and found the driver and installed it. It still does not show up. It's not even listed in the Device Manager.

I've been in contact with Dell via email, but the process is so slow and they are ignoring all my queries about this compatibility mode business. I just want my fucking DVD player to work again so I can watch a movie.

Tonight I'm starting my first secondary project, teaching an Introduction to HTML course at one of the local universities, Samoa Polytechnic.

The course manual just arrived here at the Peace Corps office. It's something I hashed together out of resources that I found on the web. I didn't actually have much time to put it together, so it's amazing for me to see it published and bound.

I'm very excited to get started. This is exactly the sort of work I expected to be doing when I signed up for the Peace Corps. There are 13 students registered who have each paid 200 tala for the privilege of attending my class which runs 6 weeks. The classes are Tuesday and Thursday night, so I don't have to worry about schedule conflicts. Hopefully I will be able to impart some of my knowledge to these interested students.

The Defrag of my hard drive is finally complete at 10:49AM after more than 14 hours. I didn't realize how fragmented my drive had become. Hopefully this will improve performance which has really bogged down lately.

I'm having a number of problems with my computer lately that may or may not be heat/humidity realated. My monitor seems to be slowly shrinking is visual area. The USB port is not reading my digital camera and worst of all, the DVD-ROM has stopped working. No more movies until I can get that solved.

One third of the world could be left behind if more is not done to provide developing countries with the skills, knowledge, and access to markets necessary to compete. In globalizing developing countries, per capita income increased 5 percent a year in the 1990s.

So starts the webpage for the DFI, or Digital Freedom Initiave. There is pilot program in the works for Senegal. Somoa could really use something like this.

I'm working on convinving the Peace Corps to find a government agency that will allow me to open and run a computer community to help bridge the ever widening digital divide that exists in Samoa between rich and poor and city and kua.

Here's the story from the Samoa Observer about the computers donated to the DOE by ANZ. I love the part about the computers being in "very good condition". That's sort of like saying someone who's dying of cancer is in very good condition. It's an absolute joke. The compters were a complete mess, full of dust, no cd-roms, about a third of the hard drives were hosed. It's a feel good story for ANZ and the Samoan government, but in truth, these computers will likely do little good other than giving ANZ a fat tax write off.

After multiple aborbive attempts, I've got Movable Type up and running with the help of fellow volunteer Kris Rush. It's been a pain in the ass, but I suppose it's worth the effort because, well, look around. This is some cool shit.