Archive for the ‘Geekery’ Category.
Last night I bought a couple things so I can get my Zagi flying wing model airplane in the air for the spring. It should be flying soon.
I subbed today at the High School as a Music teacher. The kids were difficult and I don’t have any musical training to fall back on so it was rough. One class had me keeping the 41 girl chorus in decorum. It wasn’t so bad. But those piano classes were rough!
Yow, in the last month, I’ve seen 15 movies with Netflix! My brain is getting full. Here’s what I’ve seen and how I rated it on Netflix (from 1 to 5). I’ve got no plans to systematically rate and review all of the movies I watch. That’s a bit obsessive, even for me. Netflix begs you to rate the movies so you can get better customized recommendations…
Memento 4, XXX: Special Edition 1, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, Jackson Pollock: Love and Death on Long Island 3, Fight Club 3, Donnie Darko 5, The Royal Tenenbaums 2, The Matrix: Revisited 5, Princess Mononoke 4, Mystery Men 2, Changing Lanes 3, Mr. Deeds 3, Signs 5, Panic Room 2, Minority Report 3
Currently reading:
- In Code: A Mathematical Journey by Sarah Flannery
- Wired Magazine, April 2003
- Baseline Magazine, March 2003
- Medjugorje: The Mission and Medjugorje: The Message by Wayne Weible
Recently finished:
- What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman, et al
I’m getting straight A’s in both my Psychology and Math classes. I like it like ‘dat!
How come sweet and sour sauce is really only sweet and sweet sauce? Was the sour aspect weeded out by American tastes?
—————
I’ve got a call in to Earthlink via email:
The following simple web script doesn’t work. It generates a “500 Internal Server Error”
———————————-
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use CGI::Cookie;
print “Content-type: text/html\n\n”;
print “Hello world!\n”;
———————————-
However, if you were to comment out “use CGI::Cookie;”, it works just fine.
Interestingly, the Earthlink Perl Syntax checker doesn’t see any problem with my code.
Can you help?
I sent it via email because there wasn’t anyone on support at midnight last night.
I’ve noticed that Earthlink’s email support sucks mad cow testicles, while the LivePerson chat support is very respectable. I think I’ll try a chat now…
4:20pm
HA!
Earthlink admitted that their CGI::Cookie module is messed up! 3 freaking days of banging my head against this and I’ve solved all the hard parts!
NOW, I just have to install my own CGI::Cookie module in my own directory and forget about Earthlink’s. Of course, I’ve never installed my own module, but it should be a piece of cake, right? Ugh.
4:30pm
There are 4 different cookie modules at CPAN and it’s not obvious which is the right one. I’m getting unhappy already. You know, there’s a film festival going on this weekend a couple towns over…. Maybe I’ll go to that and when I come back, this problem will be magically fixed (by the Perl Gnomes of course)
[rant on]
God-damned blog comment software! I’ve spent too many frigging hours working on this, with no frigging results!! All I want is a cute little button at the end of my log entries letting people talk about my log entries. It’d look like this:
Comments [6]
I spent forever surfing the net for code. Then what I found doesn’t work. Cgicomments… NOBODY can get Cgicomments to work. Snorcomments… I’ve been fiddling with the frigging file permissions for hours and I’m getting nowhere. Whenever I find a reference to someone who’s gotten a good blog commenter working, the reference turns out to be old… They switched to Movabletype or Blogger or something. And I’d use an online blogging comment solution too if I thought for a single second that I could trust them with my data. But there is NO WAY I’m going to trust any of these services with my bits on a permanent basis. They’re free services being weighed down by sizable bandwidth and hardware fees, being run by guys in their spare time. I know what that’s like… I ran such a service and, at some point, they’ll run out of steam and there’s a very real chance that some of the bits will get lost forever.
So all I can do is trust some locally based system… The idea isn’t hard… heck, it’s just a snazzed up Guestbook run on my own server. But Earthlink…. and… errr. ahahahakljsldkjsa dflsl ajkasdf j JDFSASD FJJSK:L
[rant off]
I -will- get it to work.
WNTI radio rules. Eagleslayer singing “The boy with Robotic Arms” made me laugh so hard, my sides hurt for 10 minutes! Heard right here on Ritchie Murder’s Atari Baby show, 1:40am, 3-13-03.
The latest distributed computing venture: Folding@Home via Google Compute. First, get the Google Toolbar. It’s good. Then install the compute thingie from my link (google doesn’t publicize the Compute link. I think that’s because the Folding venture has already gotten pretty much enough recruits. Hehe. The Google team is more than 1/2 of Folding’s distributed client base!
I now run both Seti@Home and Google Compute. I found that Seti sometimes slows down my tasks… a 1/2 second pause here and there. It’s nothing big but a little bother. So I run Seti in screen-saver-only mode. I haven’t ever had any performance problems with Folding, so I let it run all the time. Like right now!
Here’s an email response to my aunt about a question she had:
>Subject: FW: Attn: MCAFEE VERSION 7.0 CLEARANCE SALE!
>
>*NEW-Special Package Deal!*
>2003 McAfee Version 7.0 Software Suite – Home Edition-
>THE NAME THAT MEANS SECURITY FOR YOUR PC COMPUTER.
>Includes – Feature-Packed Utilities…ALL For ONE Special LOW Pr…
————-
>Should I get this?…
It’s pretty much a cardinal rule to never buy anything from a Spam message. The vast majority of spams come from scam artists trying to steal from people. I get about 20-30 spams per day (yes really!) so I pretty much know. And I get about 5 spams a month about that Mcafee. I’d guess that some software pirate in China made a gazzilion copies of Mcafee and he’s sold them to spammers. OR, maybe there aren’t ANY for sale and those folks will just disappear as soon as they get your credit card! I don’t know… well, hey, lemme check on the internet and find out a little.
I just went on Google and searched for “mcafee version 7.0” and spam.
One of the first results I got back was
one that reports on fraud cases just like I said
So the moral of the story is, don’t buy nuthin from spammers.
On the other side, if you are worried about viruses and such, you’re talking to the right person! I can set you up with a legitimate copy of Norton AntiVirus and Blackice firewall. …
It’s the 20th birthday of the Internet!
Happy Birthday, Internet! Make a wish and blow out your candles.
Oh, and happy birthday to the world as well! ;-)
lee
—— Forwarded Message
From: Bob Braden
Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2002 10:08:38 -0800 (PST)
To: ietf ot ietf dat org
Cc: internet-history@postel.org
Subject: The 20th anniversary of the Internet
We ought not to let pass unnoticed the impending 20th anniversary of
the Internet. The most logical date of origin of the Internet is
January 1, 1983, when the ARPANET officially switched from the NCP
protocol to TCP/IP. Six months later, the ARPANET was split into the
two subnets ARPANET and MILNET, which were connected by Internet
gateways* (routers).
The planning for the January 1983 switchover was fully documented in
Jon Postel in RFC 801. The week-by-week progress of the transition was
reported in a series of 15 RFCs, in the range RFC 842 – RFC 876, by
UCLA student David Smallberg.
There may still be a few remaining T shirts that read, “I Survived the
TCP/IP Transition”. People sometimes question that any geeks would
have been in machine rooms on January 1. Believe it!! Some geeks got
very little sleep for a few days (and that was before the work “geek”
was invented, I believe.)
So, on New Year’s Eve, hoist one for the 20th anniversary of the
Internet.
Bob Braden
______________________________________________
* Routers brought to you by Bob Hinden of BBN.
** Prominent survivors included Dan Lynch of Interop fame.
And of course Vint Cerf was working the Levers of Power at
ARPA.
—— End of Forwarded Message
Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
— end forwarded text