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McSweeney's Internet Tendency: YouTube Comment or e. e. cummings?

2009 Oct 19, 11:39PermalinkCommentshumor web language youtube satire poetry ee-cummings

HD DVD / Randomness... : Why not use hashes for the Anti-Phishing Filter?

2009 Sep 30, 4:07The hashing part makes sense, but not the 'why no URL query' bit: "But because victim=12345 has already been visited they satisfy condition 2 and they get the 404 page fooling them into thinking the site has already been taken down. So query strings don't really work." You could implement the same thing in the path and even were that not the case there's no telling that removing the query would get you the same page. What's described here is a general method to circumvent the AP filter not an explaination as to why it avoids the query portion of the URL.PermalinkCommentsphishing technical web browser http url hash

Comcast Digital Switch Impact on My Windows Media Center

2009 Sep 25, 2:19

Amateur wireless station (LOC)Irritatingly out of line with what their commercials say, in my area Comcast, under the covers of the national broadcast digital switch, is sneaking in their own switch to digital, moving channels above 30 to their own digital format. Previously, I had Windows 7 Media Center running on a PC with a Hauppauge PVR500 which can decode two television signals at once setup to record shows I like. The XBox 360 works great as a Media Center client letting me easily watch the recorded shows over my home network on my normal TV.

Unfortunately with Comcast's change, now one needs a cable box or a Comcast digital to analog converter in order to view their signal, but Comcast is offering up to two free converters for those who'd like them. The second of my two free converters I hooked up to the Media Center PC and I got the IR Blaster that came with my Hauppauge out of the garage. I plugged in the USB IR Blaster to my PC, connected one of the IR transmitters to the 1st port on the IR Blaster, and sat the IR transmitter next to the converter's IR receiver. I went through the Media Center TV setup again and happily it was able to figure out how to correctly change the channel on the converter. So I can record now, however:

  1. I can only record one thing at a time now
  2. Changing the channel is slow taking many seconds (no flipping through channels for me)
  3. The Hauppauge card can't know if the channel change worked. So if it tries to change to HBO (I get it for free with one of the Comcast packages) which is encrypted and the converted won't show, the channel doesn't change but the PC doesn't know it and ends up recording some other channel.
To fix (3) I need to manually go through and remove channels I don't have from the Media Center. To fix (1) I may be able to get a second IR transmitter, a third digital converter, hook it up to one of the other inputs on my Hauppauge, and go back through the Media Center TV setup. There's no fix for (2) but that's not so bad. All in all, its just generally frustrating that they're breaking my setup with no obvious benefit.PermalinkCommentsdigital tv hauppauge mce cable windows media center comcast

Parents Visited

2009 Aug 25, 12:34

My parents visited this past weekend, met Sarah's parents, saw our house, and met our bunny. On Friday we went to BluWater in Kirkland which was pretty busy and the service was slower and slightly worse than we usually find. Saturday my parents helped us with our yard quite a bit and for dinner we went to the Icon Grill with Sarah's parents. I had forgotten how much I enjoy the food at the Icon Grill - I had the very tasty meat loaf. Dinner went well and afterward we stopped at the Three Lions pub in Redmond. On all previous occasions I had tried to go in there the place was packed for a soccer game. This night however there was a man with a guitar, singing and it wasn't nearly as packed. I also found that near the bathrooms on the wall is what looks to be James Bond's jetpack.

On Sunday we went out to see Jeannie and Carl and see the renovations to Jeannie's place. We met up with them at the Fremont Market to which I hadn't been previously, and had a look around there before going back to Jeannie's to see the lovely work they'd done to her place. For dinner my parents took us out to the Melting Pot for my approaching birthday. It was fun having my parents up and I look forward to the next time they're here.

PermalinkCommentsfamily weekend

Anyone can write this crap (Phil Gyford’s website)

2009 Jul 31, 5:57"Is it worth the sensationalism and scaremongering? The endlessly inaccurate and dangerous science reporting? The pointless and news-free lifestyle articles? Do newspapers that prioritise stories based on celebrities and spectacle rather than importance to the world deserve to exist?"PermalinkCommentsvia:sambrook internet news journalism media

Charlie Rose - A conversation with Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine

2009 Jul 29, 10:58Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine promotes and discusses the concepts in his book "Free" on the Charlie Rose show.PermalinkCommentscharlie-rose chris-anderson wired free internet web economics video interview via:bengoldacre

Mostly Moved Into New House

2009 Jun 19, 8:07

New House ExteriorThe weekend before the previous, Sarah and I moved our belongings into the new house and spent a lot of time packing and unpacking, and now we're officially living there (interested Facebook friends can find my new address or just ask me). The Saturday of the previous weekend Sarah's family came over for a half house warming and half Sarah's birthday celebration which was fun and served to force us to do more unpacking and forced me to take trips to Home Depot, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc. On Sunday, Sarah and I went out to her favorite restaurant and she opened her gifts that I had to hide to keep her from opening before her birthday. Happy Birthday Sarah!

While at Home Depot I had trouble finding what I was actually looking for, but I did find everything I needed to terminate the Cat5e cables that are wired in the house. Each room has a wall plate with two RJ45 sockets, both sockets wired to Cat5e cable. One of the cables per plate was already hooked up to a standard phone service punchdown board and the other cables per plate were all hanging unterminated next to the punchdown board. So now I've terminated them all with RJ45 connectors and hooked them up to my hub, wireless router, cable modem, etc. I had the same sort of fun setting all that up as I did playing with model train sets as a child. Hopefully no therapy will be required to figure out why that is.

PermalinkCommentspersonal2 train address sarah house new-house birthday

Why we link: A brief rundown of the reasons your news organization needs to tie the Web together - Publishing 2.0

2009 Jun 12, 9:02"Because linking to sources and resources is the key gesture to being a citizen of the Web and not just a product on the Web...If, on the other hand, you want to embrace the traits that make blogs, Twitter, and so many other online communication tools a vital part of the daily life of your readers, your news site shouldn't feel like an endpoint in the conversation. It should feel like the beginning."PermalinkCommentsvia:sambrook journalism news internet web article link

Misattribution - Anne's Weblog

2009 Jun 8, 3:58"Everyone can file bugs against HTML5, including you. To be clear, that something is filed in the W3C bug database does not mean it is likely it will be included."PermalinkCommentshtml5 blog bug html w3c

Police Slog Through 40,000 Insipid Party Pics To Find Cause Of Dorm Fire | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

2009 May 31, 7:52"jeffgrako: HOLLA IF YOUR AT THE #FIRE"PermalinkCommentshumor video satire culture internet fire college phone

Star Trek Thoughts

2009 May 8, 8:23

I watched the new Star Trek movie Thursday morning, along with many others who work on Windows. Microsoft rented out a theater and played the movie on all screens. I greatly enjoyed the movie!

Spoilers follow... I'm obviously not the biggest Star Trek nerd (or at least TOS nerd) since I didn't even pick up on the fact that Kirk's dad being dead was a discrepancy from the TV series. I only figured out the alternate time-line stuff when they killed most of the Vulcans. I was just surprised they didn't set right what once went wrong by the end of the movie with some more time travel magic to bring back Vulcan. On that note, I'm pretty sure the Spock-Spock conversation at the end, is Nimoy Spock sending Sylar Spock off to school so that Nimoy Spock can get freaky repopulating the Vulcan race. Although at first after his 'two places at once' comment I thought he was saying... something else. Also, was the main evil guy a random miner turned psycho? And his crazy looking spaceship that destroys the Federation fleet was just a mining vessel from the future? Once they invent time travel anybody can get drunk, go back in time, and conquer Earth.

PermalinkCommentspersonal2 nerd movie star-trek spoliers time-travel

Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures

2009 May 3, 10:03"Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures - DISSERTATION submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Information and Computer Science by Roy Thomas Fielding 2000"PermalinkCommentshttp rest paper web architecture development api webservices roy-fielding

Netflix Watch Instantly Recommendations

2009 May 3, 9:17
WeedsAvatar The Last AirbenderPaprikaGrindhouse Planet TerrorOutsourcedThe King of KongPrimer

Netflix lets you watch a subset of their movies online via their website and a subset of those movies are available to watch on the Xbox 360's Netflix app. so its not always easy to find movies to watch on Xbox 360. Yet, I regularly see my Xbox friends using the Netflix app and its a shame they didn't make an easy way to share movie recommendations with your friends. Instead we must share movie recommendations the old fashioned way. Here's the movies I've found and enjoyed on my 360.

Weeds
You don't have to be a stoner to enjoy this humorous and dramatic satire featuring a widow trying to raise her children and deal pot in suburbia.
Avatar The Last Airbender
An American animated series that's an amalgamation of various Asian art, history, religion, etc. that maintains a great story line.
Paprika
If you enjoyed Paranoia Agent you'll enjoy this movie in the same animation style and by the same director and writer, Satoshi Kon. Its like a feature length version of a Paranoia Agent episode in which a dream machine lets outsiders view one's dreams but eventually leads to blurring the dreams and reality.
Grindhouse Planet Terror
I didn't see either of the Grindhouse movies when they first came out, but of the two, Planet Terror is the more humorous and exciting gore filled parody.
Outsourced
A refreshing romantic comedy that still has a few of the over played tropes but is easy to enjoy despite that.
The King of Kong
A hilarious documentary on the struggle between the reigning champ hot-sauce salesman and the underdog Washington state high school science teacher to obtain the Donkey Kong world record high score. After watching, checkout this interview with the creators of the movie and the villain.
Primer
I've mentioned Primer before, but I put it on here again because its really good and you still haven't seen it, have you?
PermalinkCommentsmovie personal netflix

The Old New Thing : Clap and the filter graph claps with you

2009 Apr 7, 12:45"First, you started up the application and picked a video clip. The video clip just sat there. As you started clapping, the video clip started playing. If you clapped at about 80 beats per minute, the video clip played at its normal speed. If you clapped faster, the video clip ran faster. If you clapped slower, the video clip ran slower. If you stopped clapping, the video clip stopped. It was freaky cool. Totally useless, but freaky cool."PermalinkCommentshumor clap video raymond-chen filter-graph reference-clock

YouTube - VMware demo showing two operating systems running on one phone

2009 Feb 27, 10:49Finally, you can play solitare on your phone while waiting for Android to boot with VMWare's mobile phone OS: "VMware has demoed its mobile virtualisation platform, which could potentially let users simultaneously run two different operating systems."PermalinkCommentsvideo vmware mobile phone cellphone os android google microsoft windows windows-ce

Visualisation Magazine vol1

2009 Jan 29, 1:57A magazine in flash with various visualizations from around the web.PermalinkCommentsvia:infosthetics visualization art graphic magazine web

Dopplr Blog - Blog Archive - Dopplr presents the Personal Annual Report 2008: freshly generated for you, and Barack Obama…

2009 Jan 15, 4:57Lovely travel visualization: "We've generated what we call the Personal Annual Report for all our users. It's a unique-to-you PDF of data, visualisations and factoids about your travel in 2008, that we're delivering over the next week via email to every Dopplr user who travelled in 2008. To give you an example, we thought we'd show you the Personal Annual Report of someone who's had a very busy 2008 - President Elect Barack Obama."PermalinkCommentsvia:mattb visualization blog dopplr obama travel statistics map

STGC Enumeration (Windows)

2008 Oct 1, 1:49One of the values in this enum is named 'STGC_DANGEROUSLYCOMMITMERELYTODISKCACHE'. After reading (and re-reading to make sure I word broke correctly) I'm left with the lingering impression that I've had an extensive conversation with whoever named this variable. Anyway, I thought it was a fun name.PermalinkCommentshumor software msdn microsoft reference

Anecdotes from Work

2008 Sep 23, 2:15

Diveristy in NumbersThe names in the following anecdote have been changed. Except for my name (I'm Dave).

I got a new laptop a while back. I had it in my office and Tim came in to ask me something but paused when he saw my laptop. "Oh, is this one of those new touch screen laptops?" he asked, the whole time moving his hand towards my laptop and punctuating his sentence by pressing his finger to the screen. "No" I responded.

Walking down a hallway I heard Winston, one of our managers, say, "Hey Tim!" Winston catches up to me and asks, "Are you almost done with the XYZ bug?" I realized Winston was talking to me and got my name wrong but I figured I'll ignore it and perhaps he'll realize his mistake. Winston continued "I just talked with some people who say they're blocked and waiting for Tim to finish the XYZ bug." "Dave" I said helpfully attempting to diplomatically correct Winston since he apparently hadn't realized his error. "No, it was Jeremy and Bill." Winston said naming the people he had talked to who were waiting for me to fix the XYZ bug. At this point I decided it would be easier to just answer his question and end the conversation than to get into this whole thing. As far as I know, Winston has not gotten my name wrong at any other time.

PermalinkCommentswork nontechnical

Bailout Satire

2008 Sep 23, 1:19The economic bailout program written as 419 spam. "I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you."PermalinkCommentshumor politics economics satire spam via:boingboing
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