Peeping Tom camera phone
Archive: PC Hardware
Remember when the Amazing X-Ray Specs were advertised in the back of comic books? Science marches on …
A developer in Tokyo has created an add-on for Vodafone handsets that’s meant to be used as a night filter to let people take pictures with their phones in the dark. …
As well as taking snaps in the dark, the Yamada Denshi infrared filter apparently sees through people’s clothes.
The problem arises because the filter uses the distribution of heat to create its pictures. When attached to a high-end camera, the filter can see though certain kinds of clothing and is reportedly particularly effective on dark bikinis.
Peeping Tom filter lets phones see through bikinis
@'s my boy!
Archive: Miscellanea
Illegal because there is no equivalent in Mandarin Chinese.
A father in central China has been refused permission to name his son ‘@’.
Things for your weblog
Archive: Weblog add-ons
Not my sort of thing but some people are always looking for fresh polls and geegaws to put on their weblog, Live Journal or blog. Here’s a site I just discovered devoted to such toys for webloggers.
- Name Generators
- You Know You’re Addicted to… When…
- You Know You’re From… When…
Is John Ashcroft with you in that chat room?
Archive: Miscellanea
National Science Foundation’s Approaches to Combat Terrorism has award over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the development of automated analysis of internet chat room activity. The stated goal is to spot al-Qaida and other terrorists chatting online.
But if you develop technology to ferret out one pattern you can put it to scanning for others. And the best software in the world will be deaf to nuances. Who knows you may find themselves innocently caught in a tangle of government surveillance.
Chat rooms are the highly popular and freewheeling areas on the Internet where people with self-created nicknames discuss just about anything: teachers, Kafka, cute boys, politics, love, root canal. They are also places where malicious hackers have been known to trade software tools, stolen passwords and credit card numbers. The Pew Internet & American Life Project estimates that 28 million Americans have visited Internet chat rooms.
Is Bush Planning To Listen In On Gay Chat Rooms?
Fake Google image searches from so-called celebrity site
Archive: The Wicked Web
http://google.com/imgres?imgurl=cybercelebs
net/wallpapers/elizabeth-hurley …
I can only wonder why Cyber - celebs - . - net has been sending these bogus Google image searches to one of my websites for the last few months. Needless to say I don’t have the image, never have. I simply mentioned the actress in question.
Since these false Google image searches don’t show up in any log indexed by search engines I can only assume that the spamming webmaster is totally clueless as well as dishonest. Unsurprisingly the sight is just a link farm for a host of adult websites.
Well if you are looking for photos you probably should go there. No telling what sort of malware, trojans, dialers they might try to put on your computer.
Google SEO Tools
Archive: Search Engines
McDar Internet Marketing Consulting has a few search engine optimization tools to help webmasters explore how Google is treating their sites.
As a webmaster you probably know that the search engine Google has recently been making many changes. One of the major recent changes is the removal of their datacenters from “public” view. Indeed, some of the datacenters no longer exist, but some simply no longer respond to their old URL address. If you look them up via their IP address you find that they are “alive and well”. Since many of the older Google Dance tools have not been updated to reflect these changes, I have decided to make a tool that will point to all for the “NEW” datacenters by their IP addresses.
There’s also the Datacenter Quick Check and a Google Keyword Analysis Tool.
Nonstandard key combinations
Archive: Windows Software
Back in the days of DOS most programs had their own special key combinations for accomplishing certain tasks. Many but not all would use the WordStar Ctrl key for moving the cursor. But you might need to remember a half dozen different ways to save the file you were working on.
There was something called CUA (I think) that specified certain keys for certain tasks. This is when F1 became the Help key. Though WordPerfect, then the ruling word processor, used F5.
Getting rid of oddball key combinations was I’ve thought the one good thing that came of Microsoft Windows dominance.
But too many of the programs - none to be named - don’t play the game. Variously they demand:
Ctrl-W to save and close all files.
Ctrl-H to search and replace.
Ctrl-P doesn’t print. And my text editor doesn’t bypass the print dialog when I click on the print icon.
F5 doesn’t refresh. Try Ctrl-R.
Ctrl-A doesn’t select all.
Some developers plead they are at the mercy of a library they are using. But you can then configure the software to use the standard key combinations. So the programmers could supply the Windows defaults with minimal effort.
I know, I know: Linux users expect as a matter of course to have emacs and vi bindings available.
Bought Adobe Photoshop Elements
Archive: Windows Software
Several years ago Microsoft called me on the telephone. Somehow they’d gotten the weird impression that I was an important decision maker or something else equally unlikely. If I’d answer a few questions I’d get my choice of two Microsoft software packages. After two minutes of questions I was asked what software I wanted.
I asked for a copy of Access. It still sits somewhere, never opened. And Microsoft PhotoDraw.
You’ve never heard of PhotoDraw? I don’t think many people did. PhotoDraw 2.0 was the last release. While I didn’t have great need for an image editing program I didn’t have one.
Unlike Access, PhotoDraw did get installed though it long languished unused. On taking a real interest in my main personal website I finally had a reason to use PhotoDraw. Yes, I could create logos and make theme go through ugly transmogrifications on mouse over. It never took me more than a week to realize that the effect may have looked OK on my PC but nobody would want to see it happen when their mouse accidentally ran over the top of one of my web pages.
I was using Microsoft Front Page back then. Having wisely and cleanly started out with text navigation I went off into a wild tangent of button building. You know, it takes real talent to design attractive buttons (Front Page includes nothing I’d use). I made and remade those buttons. Once a set I thought was tolerable looking was up on the page I realize they were damn ugly. Eventually I’d learn to use the program with the restraint proper to someone with no graphics talent. I still miss the little pink triangles that popped up over my hyperlinks.
Being Microsoft software I’m sure PhotoDraw was damnable &etc. PhotoDraw worked well enough for me. I got lots of bad impulses out of my system.
Before having PhotoDraw I’d been using Irfanview. IrvanView is a slick, free image viewer, image manipulation tool. I found it easier to optimize images in IrfanView than PhotoDraw. IrfanView lets me crop, sharpen and plenty of other things to pictures.
Recently the combined Adobe and Amazon rebates let me buy Adobe Elements 2.0 for $29.95. I don’t know that I really need it. A few times I’ve wanted to be able to open PSD files. People have offered attractive website enhancements. But I’d need to adjust them to my site and you quickly learn there are things you can’ t change in GIFs and JPGs. You need the source files.
Also I’m one of the few people who needs to enlarge image files, often taken from eBay scans. IrfanView will let me do that but loses lots of detail. I’m curious to see if Adobe has developed better algorithms for enlarging images or at least for cleaning them up.
I’d thought about buying PaintShopPro a couple of times when it was on sale. But it sounds like more of a power user’s tool than I’d want.
And Microsoft has PictureIt! out now. I was intrigued to read about the ability to paint out an object and have the background filled in. But given how quickly MS gave up on PhotoDraw I don’t feel like trusting them. And wondered how much their software depended on oddball proprietary formats.
For the few days I’ve had it I’ve only used Elements to crop and resize images. On one of my sites I need to enlarge images found on the web. In my few efforts I haven’t seen any sign that Adobe Elements does a better job of this than IrfanView. No particular reason to expect that it would but there was the hope that Adobe’s programmers had developed a more sophisticated algorithm.
The images have been scans of old paperback covers all of which are paintings. I’ve yet to try a photo cover. Perhaps I’ll discern a difference with those.
Not that I’m unhappy with having bought Elements. At $30.00 it be hard to. Now that my bandwidth is under control I can think about adding graphical elements to my pages and being able to open and edit the kindly offered PSD files will give me a wealth of material.
And I need to spend a couple of days on Elements tutorial sites to learn if there are subtleties of image manipulation I’m missing. Very likely.
Movable Type resources
Archive: Movable Type
Useful Movable Type Weblogs
Elise Bauer’s Movable Type tutorial weblog:
Learning Movable Type (LMT) is a growing set of tutorials, presented in blog format, aimed at helping beginners to the Movable Type (MT) content management system. These tutorials are geared for those with a good understanding of HTML, a fair understanding of CSS, but who are not necessarily programmers or web designers.
Technology writer Rogers Cadenhead, author of the forthcoming Movable Type 3.0 Bible Desktop Edition has a section devoted to SixApart software: Workbench.
Arvind Satyanarayan Movable Type how-to site:
MovaLog is your one stop for all things Movable Type. Whether it be tips and tricks or new or new plugins …
Phil Ringnalda MT Hack’s section is full of interesting Movable Type lore.
Neil Turner’s Neil’s Wolrd has a highly useful Blogging section.
Adam Kalsey, Movable Type consultant and plug-in author passes along tips in his Movable Type Archive.
The Girlie Matter has a wealth of Tips and Tricks.
Not strictly but often has entries about Movable Type: Niall Kennedy’s Weblog
From Six Apart
Almost every Movable Type plugin, listed by theme and age. Whether or not they’ve been tested with 3.x versions is noted: MT-Plugins
Movable Type’s support page has all the documentation, original templates and style sheets and the changelog to let you know what has changed between releases: Movable Type Help
Having the Movable Type documentation in one use file has been the resource I’ve used the most. Save it to your hard drive or load it in a knowledge management tool: Movable Type “printer friendly” manual
I suspect the support forums have helped more MT users than anything else. When asking for help or advice try to be concrete in the title of your post. People who just say “Help” are often ignored: MovableType Support Forums
If there’s a useful site I’ve left out I hope you’ll leave the URL in a comment.(There are sites I’ve left out because the author is either drifting away from MT or stopped writing about it.
You've sat at the computer too much when ...
Archive: Miscellanea
You’ve been sitting at your PC too long when you wake up in the middle of the night to wonder why that javascript isn’t keeping the cat on your chest in position.
And you keep trying to save your last dream by pressing Ctrl S
Moving from TextPattern to Movable Type
Archive: Movable Type
This afternoon I converted my TextPattern weblog to Movable Type.
As with WordPress I want to make it clear: I like TextPattern. TxtP has the most appealing administrative interface of any of the weblog program’s I’ve tried. No surprise that some of Dean Allen’s elegance comes across. As with WP I simply don’t have the time to master TextPattern, though it would be easier for me than WP.
I had to jump through two hoops to get from TextPattern to Movable Type. At this time there is no direct TxtP to MT script.
First I used Charles Brown’s WP to TxtP import script. Agreeably painless. Then I used Papa Scott’s WordPress to Movable Type import format script as I had when I took my WordPress weblog back to Movable Type.
There was a hitch. While I have John Gruber’s Markdown set as the default entry format that is a lazy way of turning SmartyPants on. I always supply complete HTML markup for my entries, to insure they are always portable.
For some reason my paragraphs were wrapped in extra paragraph tags:
<p><p>Paragraph</p></p>
So I deleted all the entries (no hassle, there were only twenty-six) and started afresh.
It was easy to strip out the extras in NoteTab. And for paranoia’s sake I switch the default formating to “None.” Entries and categories popped into my Movable Type setup instantly and correctly.
In my conversion from WP and TxtP to MT the only hitch has been that my keywords became whatever the default WP ‘slug’ was. So keywords like “this-name-topic-thing.” Too minor to care about.
So all of my eight weblogs are back to Movable Type.
ZoneAlarm appears to work fine
Archive: The Wicked Web • Archive: Windows Software
When I was reading reviews of antivirus software recently I think the reviewers favorites were usually Norton AntiVirus and TrendMicro’s PC-cillin. Symantec is inevitably a winner in these things.
Norton AV 2004 turned me against Symantec for a couple of reasons. 1) The required online product activation. 2) Norton 2004 just doesn’t know when to shut up. We run a program that backs up critical data files every time they change. Norton claims the program is “requesting” a scan every time it does anything, which is often. When Norton displays the notice it becomes part of the Alt-Tab sequence. When I think I’m going back to my database I’m going to a trivial menu. I’ve configured Norton AntiVirus to ignore the program repeatedly. Every time I reboot the PC Norton forgets. And each time the software intervenes to make sure my backup program isn’t infecting the computer it grabs too much CPU.
While Norton 2005 is probably a peachy program I decided I wasn’t going to install it on my home computer.
I had ZoneAlarm’s Pro firewall running in trial mode for a few days. An email arrived to say that if I bought it “Right Now!” I’d get $10 off. Uh huh. Maybe if I wait a couple of weeks I thought they’ll give me a $20 discount.
Not expecting to do anything I went to the ZoneAlarm site. I saw that if I had a Norton UPC I could get $30.00 off the ZoneAlarm Suite. One of the extras is a bundled edition of Computer Associations anti-virus software.
I don’t launch files from people that I don’t know. People that I do know never send me files. Funny that it works out that way. Thanks to the spam filters I use virus laden emails are shunted to junk folders. Hard for me to judge how good a job ZA is doing. It does get confused when a virus arrives in Thunderbird. It doesn’t know how to neutralize it. Since the email has already been junked I don’t much care. When I close the warning window ZA warns me against stopping the scan. It has already scanned and I don’t need for it to do anything.
With Outlook it kills the occasional invader. No confusion.
CloudMark’s SpamNet came free with the ZoneAlarm Suite. As I noted earlier it works fine. I’ve never fired up an instant messaging client on this PC so I don’t know how well that works. At some point I should give the personal information “vault” a test. A friend of mine did have his credit card charged recently and he’s a frequent online buyer. His computer is fairly secure and we’ve never figured out how they grabbed his credit card data.
ZoneAlarm
ZoneAlarm’s firewall works as advertised. I haven’t experienced any sluggishness, conflicts or other problems. I’ve seen reports of people having trouble with Zone Alarm 5 but I didn’t install the software until it had been out for a time.
From WordPress to MovableType
Archive: Movable Type
I’ve had a WordPress weblog for a few months. Sorry, I had a WordPress weblog for a few months.
This afternoon I converted the site from WP to Movable Type.
What was wrong with WP? Nothing. Nothing at all. If there were a problem it would be with me. Installing WP was painless, thanks to Alex King a good template was easily had.
I never had the time to learn WordPress. As you might suspect work, my used bookshop, takes up some of my time. My personal life has become extremely demanding. And there’s no reason to have assorted weblogs if you don’t post to them.
While I was posting to my WP site I never made the time to learn how to customize it. I figured I’d get around to making it more my own when WP 1.3 arrives.
But I’m already modestly fluent in Movable Type’s tags and inner workings. As I thought about it today my main reason for running more than one weblog platform - I’m not a developer or software geek - was as much saying that I do as anything else. Staying above the (silly) fray as it were.
WP has no unique feature that I need. The built-in lists are a highly desired feature for some. I’m happy enough doing my own in HTML-Kit and uploading it to diverse websites.
While I like WordPress - most of the weblogs I visit run it - I went back to Movable Type mostly to save time and finger wear.
I used Papa Scott’s WordPress export script. Actually I used two, I gave Carthik’s a run as well.
When I used Scott’s script - in FireFox* - the export went fine but when I looked at the output there was an error message at the top. Asking Movable Type to import the file got me a “Swell, all done!” But no entries were imported. So I tried Carthik’s. No error message in the file but MT gave me the same blasĂ© lying message.
Finally I viewed the source in FireFox, saved that to disk, uploaded it to the server and Movable Type gulped up the import. There was a tiny glitch: there were about a dozen or so anonymous comments that had no one had left consisting of “AM” and “PM.” Killing those was an easy chore.
Anyway, use whatever weblogging software invites your admiration or ease of use and remember there are many paths to software purgatory.
* Long ago when I tried exporting and importing a weblog using Internet Explorer it did work but the result was a mess.
My own Movable Type 3.11 upgrade
Archive: Movable Type
Waiting to upgrade to Movable Type 3.x probably saved me lots of hassles. No time without MT-Blacklist (time to give Jay Allen a second donation) nor needing to install his interim release for users of MT 3.0D, and most happily no struggle upgrading.
There was my typical dopey problem. I’d downloaded the full package. It doesn’t include the Movable Type upgrade scripts. Took me a little time to realize that I should’ve downloaded the upgrade archives. Took me even longer to realize they’d be on the same account menu as the others had been (I noticed that aside from the two unlimited licenses I have I have rights to two copies of MT 2.6).
My Movable Type 3.11 upgrade was as painless as all prior MT updates (of course I skipped at least one of the first 2.6x releases). I removed all traces of the old MT-Blacklist so I could replace it with the new edition. Like many people I’m getting the mysterious “unix.pm” error. By all accounts that does no harm other than looking ugly on the screen.
I dropped MT-Textile for Markdown with SmartyPants. That was just copying files.
Today was a work day so I haven’t had the chance to enable scheduled publishing, the feature that I was looking for the most.
I’ve always been chary of installing plug-ins. My templates already have plenty of overhead and I’ve never wanted to find myself really depending on them. (So I never use markup plug-ins for my entries, always supply full HTML.) With Movable Type’s background processing I think I’ll start examining new plug-ins more closely.
MT really does seem much faster than before. Hope that proves true for folks leaving comments.
I’m trying to decide if I want to turn comment moderation on in selective weblogs. I’m reluctant to for a couple of reasons. I wonder it will discouraging commenting. Mostly I fear it will tend to encourage my own sometimes ruthless comment removal. While part of me rebels at removing comments without strong reason another section of my brain says “Kill stupid comments! Kill them dead!”
