Category: nerd

I’ve just finished an upgrade. Every thing seems to be working and I feel good.

After donating blood, I went in to work a little early to get some stuff done. We’re right in the middle of finals and doing an upgrade to our online course software. When I walked through the door, I was informed that the server was down. Another hardware failure. So I quickly returned a few calls to understandably flustered instructors then went and got coffee. Today was supposed to be a very busy day. Everything I was planning on doing today had to do with our server, and having it down means I’m at a loss for what to do. So I’m doing this and enjoying my coffee. I really hope we didn’t loose any data. This is the third hardware failure in a year.

I’ve been working on my Mp3 collection for way longer than I expected. In a somewhat entertaining exchange, my friend Ben and I were comparing collections (make as many jokes as you’d like). We had each been trying to catch up with the other and were somewhat surprised at how close we both were to each other. It was within a few hundred songs.

I’ve been working over the last 2 years on tagging (ID3v2) and sorting my collection. During that time I’ve made an effort not to accumulate more music. Sometimes I failed, but I ran into a physical limit on my hard drive which has allowed me to focus more on the task. I’ve now completed as much as I can manage and I’m backing up to a FW HD (thanks Phi) and reformatting my HD to make more space. No more partitions.

Today, right before backing up, I went through and deleted a rather large selection of items that didn’t fit into full albums or sounded like crap. Which brings me to my main point.

PC users are idiots. Who else encodes mp3s with the wrong names, at crappy bit-rates, and adds comments about “encoded by -=dipshipt=-“? PC users. That’s who. Now, I may have been guilty of some mp3 faux pas in the past, but I’ve easily made up for my initial errors. Besides, we’re talking about 1998, not 2002 or anything. And to those of you using a Xing or RealJukebox to encode, do us all a favor and destroy your computer. It sounds like crap.

Back in the day I used SoundEdit 16 to encode SWA files directly from CD. It took forever. But you’ve probably come across some of the tracks I encoded. Seriously. Ever come across Soul to Squeeze? The splash symbols and high-hat may have a slight wash, but that was in 1997.

Regardless, I want to thank all those who shared their favorites with me. My life has been enriched by the variety of music I’ve been exposed to. And to the artists, I’m still buying music and even going to some shows when I can afford it. I’m heading your call KRS, and if you come to Portland, I’ll be there.

AOL/Netscape has said that they will release a version 7.2 of the Netscape browser based on the release of Mozilla 1.7 (supposedly a long-life release). I’m an advocate of Mozilla and have been pleased that Netscape 7.x has been available as an alternative to IE. Netscape at least gets some name recognition when you tell people that their computer is hopelessly mired in spyware and crap and they’re better off using a different browser.

Mozilla, despite being a better product, and the real software behind Netscape, doesn’t seem to register on most people’s “Legitimate Software Meter.” This is problematic in a situation when Netscape is viewed as a dying company/browser (it is). I was relieved at first to hear the news of the 7.2 release, but then realized its just extending the slow death of Netscape, hindering the option for Mozilla to go mainstream. All the Netscape/Moz-haters may recognize 7.2, but it’ll be the last time they’re so generous.

Is Mozilla ready for the mainstream? Yes, it has been for some time. It does everything that most people need (except windows update), blocks pop-ups, has a built in html editor, javascript debugger, mail client, tabbed browsing, great CSS/XSLT support, and its not susceptible to the same exploits that IE is and will be for some time.

So, what is wrong with Netscape? Well, being an AOL property, it installs with all the AOL crap you’d expect from another dying company. Netscape 7.x does include a popup blocker, but by default, it allows pop-ups from Wal-mart/Netscape/AOL/Time-Warner/etc. What a crock.

From the support standpoint, I understand that it would be easier to just support one browser. But with IE, that means supporting their Zone Alarm Firewall, spyware, toolbars and pop-up blockers, all which often negatively effect the browser or the Internet experience in some way.

I suppose this all gets back to the support for standards versus the support an application discussion. I think you’ll be able to figure out which side I take.

Most of my work involves helping people with computer problems. I help them convert a word document to a PDF, format HTML for use in an online class, or figure out why something isn’t working correctly. I’m pretty good at it, and people wonder where I learned all this stuff. Well, I learned it by doing and reading.

Lately I’ve been getting a fair number of repeat requests from repeat offenders. Many should know how to do this stuff by now, and most of it is very simple. Now I hate to be harsh, but there’s a saying in the computer world; If you don’t know something – “Read the F*cking Manual.” Hell, the link for help is right next to the link for the thing you have a question about!

I’m starting to get the feeling that this idiom may be lost for the older generations, so we should start teaching it to our children. Right away. Its an important lesson that can be expanded well beyond the computer realm to other areas of life. If you have a problem with your VRC, your conditioner, or your azaleas, read the f*cking manual. There’s got to be one somewhere. Check your library, or the Internet.

I realize this may sound somewhat cold, and it is. I do enjoy helping people that I want to help. This includes friends and family ( at the appropriate time and hourly rate). And I myself have been known to ask questions even when the answer may be staring me in the face. Its nice to have someone explain things to you, but its also nice to socialize with people as well.

I thought about this all day yesterday, then a friend came over for help selling his returned engagement ring on eBay. I thought about delaying the post, but he knows this isn’t about him.

I still haven’t worked out the appropriate parody to “Mommas don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys.” It’ll take some time.

I’ve thrown together a simple shell script that updates your MT-Blacklist from the clearinghouse file using the interval of your choice with a cron job. If you use it, be couteous to his bandwidth and limit the frequency with which you update. I know its simple, so don’t laugh. And if you see something obviously dumb, let me know.

#/bin/sh
# MT-Blacklist Update
# Andy Freed
# freed@myrealbox.com
# http://freed.dyndns.org
#
# This is a very simplistic script to keep the blacklist file
# for Jay Allen's MT-Blacklist plugin for Moveable Type
# see http://www.jayallen.org/projects/mt-blacklist/ for details
# concept: script is run by cron at interval set by user.
# script downloads new script with CURL from url listed above
# uses curl function to overwrite existing list.
##################
# User Defined
##################

# Full Path to blacklist file on your server
path="/Library/WebServer/Rooftop"

# URL for updated blacklist
url="http://www.jayallen.org/comment_spam/blacklist.txt"

if [ -f "$path/blacklist.txt" ]
then
cd $path
#move existing to backup file
mv blacklist.txt blacklist.last
#fetch new file with curl, transfer/failure will be silent
curl -s -O $url

if [ -a "$path/blacklist.txt" ]
then
#remove .last list if successful
rm blacklist.last
else
#replace list if curl failed
mv blacklist.last blacklist.txt
fi
exit 1
else
#fetch new file with curl, transfer/failure will be silent
curl -s -O $url
fi

Both of my sites have developed a case of comment spam in the last 2 weeks. The amount in Greymatter was a nearly negligible 6 comments all in one entry. So I turned off comments for that entry. Simple

However, there have been over 200 comments left with rather lurid names in my Moveable Type site – rooftopbrew.com. To combat the evil scripts, I’ve added MT-blacklist, which Noah recently added to his site as well. I’m not sure how effective it is yet, but it sure made it easy to remove the 200 junk entries. Whew.

You may have noticed a bizarre message instead of the normal page over the last week or so. I’ve been going through a number of upgrades, and each time I install a security patch, the httpd.conf and default index pages get overwritten by Apple’s generic appache installation. Blah. Sometimes I don’t catch it for a while, like this morning, when it was up for roughly 12 hours. My appologies.

I’ve completed 2500 work units for the Seti@Home project. Woohoo! That puts me in 94540th place overall. I colorized the certificate because it was kind of dull otherwise. The last certificate I received was back in November of 2001.

Today my zip disk died. Big deal? Well, yeah it is. The disk was 10 years old. I got it when we purchased our Zip drive way back in 1994 to compliment our nearly full Performa 600 HD. Each disk increased our storage capacity by another 90%. The drive was amazing, and this disk went with me through high school, college, and finally died at work.

The problem is, I’m not sure what burial best befits removeable magnetic storage media. CDs you can break, microwave, etc. Hard Drives you can Drop from the 7th floor of your dorm, then take it appart and play with the plates. I tried to open the casing but hurt my finger.