grand stream dreams: humor

Showing posts with label humor. Show all posts

Sunday, July 28, 2013

ForSec “Value Package” Linkfest - No coupons required!

One last Linkfest from a now exhausted GSD blogger this weekend.

Cleaning out the “to-be-blogged” hopper is always rewarding, but I tend to get very behind on the weekend chores. My saving grace this weekend has been frequent scattered showers and an equally tired Lavie who hasn’t been interested in going out for shopping, groceries, or dining out. The kitchen has been cleaned. The laundry has been done for the week.

Next stop, a few hours of rest, post-blogging, then a wind-down with Endeavour on PBS Masterpiece.

Too Funny Not To Miss

Bloody galah scammers still not getting the message - Troy Hunt’s blog. Security guru Troy Hunt has had his fair share of “this is (not) Microsoft cold calling you…your PC is infected…let me remote control it” scams and has picked them all apart to the bone.

This time he takes a new angle…in a way that only an Aussie could pull off! This is a classic! Troy, please offer us some of those sound files or link to where we can get them! I need to put together a Texan sound-effect package for similar fun with unwanted callers. Brilliant!

Microsoft Security News

Microsoft Releases New Mitigation Guidance for Active Directory - Microsoft Security Blog

Overview of Microsoft`s "Best Practices for Securing Active Directory" - SANS Computer Forensics and Incident Response blog’s Mike Pilkington does a great summary and takeaway of the new AD mitigation guidance.

Security Awareness Training: Your First Line of Defense (Part 4) - WindowSecurity.com’s Deb Shinder discusses evaluating training effectiveness short and long-term.

Friday, August 24, 2012

I’m probably the only Sysadmin bothered by this TV ad

A certain American automaker is running a summer advertising series you may have seen in some edited form or other where the host mills around and “interviews” various folks.

In the main advertisement opening there is a very brief shot of the well-known and respected host quipping about grillin’.

And it bugs me every time!

My what a nice rack you have there Mike!

Luckily, both Brian Adkins (who kindly provided the video above to YouTube) and Gizmodo writer Sam Biddle also seem to be eagle-eyed on this particular grilling technique likely learned from a hungry sysadmin trapped in a network room with a lot of food but no pit.

Discovery Channel Superstar Is Grilling on a Shelf, Not a Grill - Gizmodo

While Mike’s technique and equipment probably won’t earn him a guest spot on Barbecue University with host Steven Raichlen anytime soon, I have to confess, it appears that use of a “baker’s” wire rack (also seen in network rooms holding server and system equipment) apparently is not completely a made-for-TV gimmick after-all.

…though I have to confess, Warren Schwartz’s rack and technique looks more sexy!

That one actually looked quite professional and culinary-grade. Never one to shirk from a mystery, it took me just a bit of detective work, but between shots of the grill seen above used by chef Warren Schwartz and images in the Gizmodo comment section I was able to trace down what is probably the actual grill used by Warren.

Turns out it seems to be a Big John 5 foot Charcoal Grill from Big John Grills & Rotisseries.

Who knew?!

So the next time you sysadmins want to impress the other techies at your backyard barbeque, see if you can pull one of these Big John babies out! Who knows, maybe Mike will show up and help you flip.

However, judging from his grill work in the ad versus his handiwork as seen in his role as a host in another show, his dirty-job handling skills might be better put to use opening up your PC and server cases and blowing out all the dust and guck from inside them while he’s there!

CC attribution: by "eurleif" (Leif K-Brooks) on flickr. haydvu4z.joh

Now that’s a dirty job!

Though in my mind, Mike’s grill will still be associated with use as a server rack.

--Claus V.

Bonus Link: What’s on the grill in France? via Justinsomnia

Now that’s my kind of grill and delectables! -Yummers

Sunday, January 22, 2012

The GSD Curmudgeon says “Get off my Yard you Dang Kids!”

Sigh. I’m getting old.

I recently read a post at ReadWriteWeb by Scott Fulton, III Mozilla's Plan for Keeping Firefox Relevant in a Post-Browser Web.

That day I became dangerously close to becoming the old technologist guy equivalent of the “You kids get off my lawn!” guy we all probably know.

What is Mozilla doing to my beloved Firefox of the near and dear “future”?

HTML5 runtime functionally support (for driving in-browser, non system proprietary, web-apps).
Extending cloud-based services.
An on-line identity management system called “BrowserID”. (How it works)
and more stuff imagined and planned.

That left me grumbly then John Paul Titlow at ReadWriteWeb posted this Mozilla: We're About to Grab More Data About You, But Here's How We'll Keep It Safe.

Mozilla has some big plans up its sleeve in 2012. The non-profit open source foundation is planning some features for its Firefox Web browser and beyond that will require greater access to user data. In a blog post, the organization explains exactly how it intends to use and handle that data. In short, very carefully.

The blog post John Paul references is up at Mozilla Privacy Blog: Mozilla to Offer New User-Centric Services in 2012.

While I recognize and appreciate the very challenging work that browser developers have (not just at Mozilla), I think I’m grumbly for two primary reasons here with Mozilla.

First, I was a very early adopter of Firefox. It was quicker than IE. It was slimmer (memory and feature bloat) than IE. It was more secure than IE. And I could plug all kinds of things into it (Add-Ons/Extensions) to customize it with only those features and capabilities that helped make my experience on the Web better. If I didn’t need it, I didn’t' install it and thus kept the Firefox browser lean and mean.

I really do “get it” with the coming exciting wave of “web-based apps” and running them in your browser and the security it will now bring (think JavaScript/Flash). It’s the next “big” evolutionary shift for the Internet. Really. Who of us really still think of the Internet as being just a super-large reference library and world-wide town-square/market anymore? It’s now a world-wide commercial mall and entertainment center. Really. Oh sure, you can still go down that wing none of the hip kids hang out at and find the pubs where the old-timers hang out, a few plain coffee-bars where the wanna-be journalist “bloggers” hang out and trade stories of yore, and maybe go into that virtual bookstore of arcane knowledge and technical minutia that some of us still love. But really. None of the cool companies and consumers come down this way. They demand different things. Better things. A new paradigm of interaction and operation.

Sigh.

So the browser needs to change to keep up. Bigger, more embedded features. Probably faster. Probably louder too with base-boost and kickers. Hopefully the security alarm on it will be better too.

Secondly, my bones ache every time a new ID management system comes out that gets closer to being a cloud-based requirement. I know, it’s for my own good their doing it. Really. I’m so much safer having more and more of my user data off-loaded to the Webs and Clouds. Clearly the higher and higher it goes away from me the safer and safer and harder and harder it must be for the underground dwellers to grab it. Right? What? Oh, I have to just “trust” everyone “out-there” with my user data and All-In-One credentials and stuff. I’m sure everyone will be honorable and diligent in keeping my account and passwords and user data safe and secure. Nobody ever gets their customer’s account/password information lost to hackers, or on a laptop, or on a USB stick anymore, or via a network traffic hack. Right? That was just in the “old-days”. These new solutions are really, really safer.

I get it. I do. And I appreciate everyone working so hard to keep Firefox and my web experience so much more safe, more secure, and more powerful than ever before. I appreciate modern AC over running a fan past a block of ice to cool my house. Really. And who doesn’t like the convenience of a cellular smart-phone over a plain-old copper analog line service wired into your house?

My browser is growing up, and the world it is living is changing as fast as it is.

Sigh.

I still use (and probably will) Firefox as my personal “production” web-browser of choice. It works for me and my way of being productive. That said, when I’m surfing the web, give me Chrome. I guess I have to still drive the daily commuter into work and back, but yeah, on the weekends I like to pull out the latest sports car for tooling around the highways and byways and back roads.

You know, I was a very early adopter of Chrome. It was quicker than Firefox. It was slimmer (memory and feature bloat) than Firefox. It was more secure than Firefox. And I could plug all kinds of things into it (Add-Ons/Extensions) to customize it with only those features and capabilities that helped make my experience on the Web better. If I didn’t need it, I didn’t' install it and thus kept the Chrome browser lean and mean. In fact, I hear from the Google Chrome Blog that Chrome is about to get more Speed and Security with pre-rendering of pages and enhanced URL and file-download checking. What’s not to like about that!

I gotta admit, high-school senior (these kids again!) Danny Stieben’s timely post at MakeUseOf blog probably sums it up right: Why It Eventually Won’t Matter What Browser You Use [Opinion].

It won’t. Honestly. It just won’t. Time to face the music and admit I’ve got to adopt the new (browser/web) core “technology” design model and landscape or I’ll become irrelevant and end up spending the rest of my days in that dilapidated and decaying wing of the New Web Mall hanging out with the other curmudgeons and making fun of those really dorky guys and gals still using AOL web-mails, web portal home-pages with their IE 5/6 and Firefox 3 web-browsers. Seriously? Who uses those anymore?!! Get a clue.

Here. Spin a wheel and take a pick. Take one. Use one. Just don’t become friends or companions. Someone’s bound to change and the relationship will sour, and there will be a new favorite.

Internet Explorer - Web Browser for Microsoft Windows
Internet Explorer 10 - Test Drive
Google Chrome - Get a fast new browser. For PC, Mac, and Linux
Get More From Your Firefox — Mobile, Add-ons & Other Stuff
Apple - Safari - Browse the web in smarter, more powerful ways.
Opera browser - Faster & safer internet
Category:Windows web browsers - Wikipedia
List of Web browsers for Windows - Web Developer Notes

The GSD Curmudgeon ends with these moving and inspiring words of wisdom and perspective on the whole thing.

Great Motivational Speech - It Just Doesn't Matter - YouTube

Ok…soap box away. We will now return to regular GSD programming.

--Claus V.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

In other EU “Dept. of Silly Ministries” legal news…

cc credit: work by southtyrolean on flickr

Just saw this:

Microsoft Ordered to Delete Browser - NYTimes.com

Then wondered when we won’t next see this:

BRUSSELS (DS) — The European Union said Friday that Ford and GM’s practice of selling tires together with their individualized transportation systems (i.e. cars and trucks) violated the union’s antitrust rules.
It ordered the battered US vehicle making giants to untie tires from their products in the 27-nation union, enabling makers of rival tyres to compete fairly.
“These Yanks tying of tires to their vehicles harms competition between tyre makers, undermines product innovation and ultimately reduces consumer choice,” the E.U. said in a statement.
It gave the Big Two eight weeks to respond, adding that the companies could defend their position in a hearing if it found that useful for the amusement of the EU court systems.
A frustrated US product spokesman issued a statement saying, “We are committed to conducting our business in full compliance with European law, no matter how difficult our attempts to navigate and understand confusing EU member government ministries might be.”
The commission’s investigation into these latest charges of unfairly equipping their vehicles with tires began a year ago, after European Carmakers filed a complaint. They argued that US car makers hurt EU competitors not only by bundling tires with vehicles, in effect allowing them to drive vehicles these products directly off the dealer lot after purchase, but also continued to hurt their feelings by not following accepted internationally accepted standards as to which side of the road is the proper one to drive on.
According to the EU spokesman after catching his breath from a laughing-fit, Chrysler was left out of the suit because, “…nobody takes them seriously anyway…they are like that software made by penguins in the Arctic.”

I’m certainly no Internet Explorer fan, but I’m thinking most folks are savvy enough to know how to download and install an alternative browser to IE on their own by now.

I can’t believe I am saying this, but I can’t imagine a Windows OS release that didn’t include any web-browser included at all as part of the install package. Certainly Microsoft has a right to include a web-browser in their software OS packages? Yes I wish the Windows OS didn’t require IE for operation of some things, but sheesh. Cut ‘em some slack here guys…

I haven’t forgotten the uproar and furor that IE generated last time this reared its head. But come, on. Now I think things are getting a bit silly overseas!

--Claus V.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Quick Rant: Discriminatory Supermarket Pricing

I would probably have passed this up but according to the news report linked below I see that it appears some stores in Dallas, Texas also pull this "enhanced” customer pricing stunt.

Avanza: Supermarket Chain Adds 10% At Register, But Only In Some Stores – The Consumerist.

9 questions with Nash Finch Co. – 9NEWS.com

Here’s how I imagine and have completely and satirically re-fabricated the interview had we been able to set up a packet-sniffer or run it as a SNL parody.

Question 1: Why does Nash Finch charge shoppers at Avanza, Food Bonanza and Wholesale Food Outlets an extra 10 percent at the register?

Answer: Because we have the cajones to do it and get away with it.

Question 2: Do you charge that fee at any other stores and why just those stores?

Answer: Nope. Just where we can take advantage of folks who are able to fall for our confunding, obfuscation, and fuzzing techniques of check-out register markups.

Question 3: When did you start charging that fee and in which stores did you begin the new program?

Answer: After a rocking party where we brainstormed and figured out no one (our select and valued customer populace in those markets) would complain or figure it out.

Question 4: We are going to report that those stores, which cater mostly to the Hispanic population, are charged the extra 10 percent at the register, whereas that is not done in your other stores that do not cater to Hispanics. What is your response to this?

Answer: Go head. Make my day.

Question 5: Your flyers and circulars say “A great way to save – plus 10 percent at the register.” Shoppers we spoke with interpret that as they would SAVE an extra 10 percent at the register. Therefore, are your flyers misleading shoppers?

Answer: No – that’s clearly what they mean based upon our survey of company executives and marketing specialists. What our consumers think is false and irrelevant.

Question 6: Do you advertise that extra fee in any other way (other than your flyers and circulars)?

Answer: Absolutely. We also put the information in mouseprint, carefully worded in Ukrainian. The 10 percent added at the register is thus not a hidden charge or extra fee..its a way of telling our customers just how much we value them, were they instead to to be (hypothetically) Ukrainian immigrants.

Question 7: Eight shoppers we spoke with did not notice that they were charged the extra 10 percent until we showed them the line-item on their receipts. Is your company hoping that most shoppers don’t notice that extra fee?

Answer: Eight? Really? Darn it! Got to work harder at getting that number down more.

Question 8: How many complaints have you received about charging 10 percent extra?

Answer: None. Seems the only people who are whining about this are consumer-rights advocates. Those few customers who have figured this out have indicated they are so impressed with this bonus level of service, that for now on they are going to be shopping at other competitive grocery stores to see if they find ones that are lacking our personal concept of consumer value and corporate integrity and…hey…wait a minute!

Question 9: Wouldn’t it be more honest/up front to just add 10 percent to the price of all of the products—so that people can see the actual price on the shelf and on the sticker?

Answer: Absolutely not! In fact based on the feedback we have been receiving over this issue, we are about to implement a new program. All goods in our stores will now be marked as “Free” and will only charge a per-item “Checking and Bagging” fee based on a 110% markup of the MSRP. We dare anyone to beat our shelf-prices now!

Sigh…….

Our local grocery store chain offers those “self-service” checkout lanes where you scan-n-bag all your items. Lavie and Alvis love ‘em.

However, on principle, I make it a point to go to the manned/womanned checkout lanes. Way I figure it, I’m not getting any discount for doing their work for them. So to get the full embedded product sale value of what I’m paying for I want the company labor to assist me, even if it means a longer wait. Now if they would knock of even 2-5% from my final register bill for doing all the checkout work myself, well then. I’d be first in those self-service checkout lines….

--Claus

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Extras for Windows

On my systems, I prefer to run very few third-party applications/utilities at startup.

These are in addition to the usual security applications or dual-monitor helpers that I use.

My current systems contain the following:

|MG| Motherboard Monitor 5.3.7.0 Update 2 – monitor cpu and system temperatures,

Process Lasso – keeps CPU cycles down under control,

allSnap – snaps windows to edges of screen,

MemStat XP – provides view of how much free memory the system has,

RocketDock – the best dock-launcher for Windows, ever, and

Rainlendar – a handy desktop-merged calendar.

Other than that, I rarely use any other utilities or tools at launch.

Except I re-found a new one.

Windows File/Copy/Move Alternatives

SuperCopier - (freeware) – I have posted before about this and several other great Windows file/copy managers. In the past I have just ran it on demand. (See alternative link also at SourceForge.net: Supercopier).

For most of may daily work, the default Windows copy/paste function worked great. However it is limited in some of its options and the other day I was copying several ISO files to a storage drive and the default copy-time was around seven minutes per ISO file.

Mucking around I found that if I booted a system with one of my custom WinPE 2.0 boot disks I was getting copy-times in the just over 2-minute range. I launched SuperCopier on my main laptop system at work and found it also was able to take a seven-minute file copy time down to just under three minutes. Good stuff. So I decided to flick the switch to launch it at boot on my XP systems.

That worked great but only for file/copy actions in the Windows Explorer shell. I do 90% of my file-management using FreeCommander.

Turns out SuperCopier has a configuration option so I can associate it to handle copy/paste actions in FreeCommander (or any other application) if I so choose. Nice! Now I can have it work in both worlds.

Other great Windows file copy managers:

TeraCopy - (free for personal use) – Very nice, fast and tiny.
Copy Handler - (freeware) – Dependable and fast file-copy activity. Updated periodically.
Roadkil.Net's Unstoppable Copier - (freeware) – Special-use tool to get copy files that are “damaged" like off optical media or that give other programs copy-errors.
FastCopy - (freeware) - New to me that some claim is the fastest file-copier tool out-there today.

For Consideration

Here are some additional applications and items I have come across this week. I'm still out on a final decision.

Firefly plugin turns Firefox into an advanced file manager - Download Squad - This Add-on extension for Firefox (get the Firefox 3.0 compatible version here at Firefly website) looks like it might be a helpful tool. It gives users the ability to launch a Windows Explorer-like tab in Firefox to do file-management tasks. It does allow multiple views to be used (dual-multi-pane). I couldn't figure out how to change the found style and size and on my work system it came up in a large-font Times New Roman. Ugly! Besides, a dedicated file-management tool like FreeCommander is all I really need and has loads-more features. However, it's a great and clever effort and might be worthwhile to keep an eye on.

Taskbar Shuffle - (freeware) - tiny little app that lets you drag-drop rearrange the items in your Windows taskbar. I confess there have been times when I have had like ten or fifteen items open and wanted to reorganize them. This would let me do it. The big question is, how often and is it worth installing to run on startup? Major plus points: now compatible with UltraMon multi-monitor management software. For a bit more: Taskbar Shuffle Tweaks Your Windows Taskbar - Download Squad.

Taskix - (freeware) - An alternative choice to Taskbar Shuffle. Run on demand or register DLL to run at startup. Doesn't seem to have as many options, but how many options do you really need to rearrange taskbar items?

Miscellaneous (test to see who reads down this far in a post)

AutoRuns for Windows - (freeware) - This utility was updated to version 9.3 and now "..adds support for several additional shell extension points, including copy hook, property sheet, and drag and drop handlers, fixes a bug in the Vista gadget parsing code and better handles malformed paths."

Vista, Word and Google Desktop circumvent TrueCrypt function - News - heise Security UK - For you forensics and security geeks. Turns out that even though TrueCrypt is able to afford some folks under certain configurations and usage "plausible deniability" for hidden and encrypted material, some points of attack exist to discover the presence. Security guru Bruce Schneier has co-authored a paper looking into this that is a fascinating read: Defeating Encrypted and Deniable File Systems: TrueCrypt v5.1a and the Case of the Tattling OS and Applications (PDF), paper by A. Czeskis, D. J. St. Hilaire, K. Koscher, S. D. Gribble, T. Kohno and B. Schneier.

5 Jokes That Will Get'Em Giggling | Geekdad from Wired.com - Funny and family friendly jokes for laughs. The comments are filled with more user submissions.

Goodness knows, we all need more laughter in the world!

Cheers!

--Claus

Saturday, July 05, 2008

I want in there to see that!

I was at my ophthalmologist's office this week getting a followup visit to the ongoing eye issues I've been dealing with after my recent glasses upgrade.

Got some possibly bad news. Never a good thing to hear when you are dealing with your eyesight.

Maybe I'll post about it in a while. I want to stay safely in denial for a while. At least until I see the specialist to whom I was referred.

Anyway....

While sitting in the waiting area by myself, happily watching a Hannah Montana rerun on the television, I noticed the following sign posted on a door in their suite:

WARNING

DO NOT ENTER

PREGNANT LASER IN USE

I wanted to go in and see that pregnant laser soooo bad!

Really would have been a sight for sore eyes.

At least I got to laugh a bit.

--Claus

Monday, May 26, 2008

C it now or C it later

Got a few more posts to put up before the day is through.

Cheated on the Bar-b-que front. Dropped by the local smokehouse and picked up some brisket sammy's. Yumm.

Let's see 160 tapes x 3 hours = 480 hours of encoding?

I saw this interesting device this morning:

ION USB VCR - Last Chance To "Be Kind & Rewind" - Retro Thing

The very first VCR movie we rented was Stripes. It's pretty dated now, but it seemed really funny at the time to a impressionable high-school kid. All disestablishment and attitude. Good stuff. I'm not sure what the first Betamax movie I saw was. Probably Murder on the Orient Express. Think it was a two-tape version.

We probably have at least 160 VCR tapes and movies around our video-library. The vast majority are Disney material.

They take up lots of shelf-space and it just isn't very convenient any longer to pop them in and watch. We usually keep a blank VHS tape in the deck to capture the occasional show, but nowhere near as much as we used to. And no. No TiVo yet in the Valca home.

I don't know what the legal ramifications would be for changing out our VHS tape collection and converting them to a DVD-based codec format. Probably illegal, despite the fact we own them and you can't find VHS movies anymore in any store. I think a few pharmacies and grocery stores still stock blank tapes, but even these are getting a bit harder to find.

I wonder if any GSD readers have suggestions or advise on porting VHS tapes to a digital format.

I don't know which system I would want to use. The Vista system has 2x the RAM as my desktop, but I've got a 500GB drive in my desktop system and the AMD Athlon XP 2400 chip is still pretty fast.

I haven't really done much research into video capture devices yet. Would USB 2.0 be fine? I'm not sure I could find a PCI card for my desktop unit any longer. What codex format should I use? I would probably want to find something that would work on both the laptops as well as our Sony DVD player. I suppose I better dig out the manual. At close to 160 or so tapes, that would be many, many hours of encoding work. I would really want to find a balance between quality and storage space on media. Especially if I went ahead and burned them to DVD.

Probably will be one of those projects I think about doing, but never follow-through on. That works out to about twelve (12) 40-hour weeks worth of encoding. Not sure I have that much free time. Better stock up on a few more VHS desks while I can still find them.

Reminds me of a great scene from the Cowboy Bebop series (Speak Like a Child episode 18) where Faye gets a package that contains a Betamax tape. So the boys go on a hunt for a player. Turns out they find a VHS one so it's not compatible.

Hello Mars!

Last night when we got back from taking Mom out to a birthday dinner, my little bro and I sat in her living room watching the countdown for the Mars lander. It was pretty fun doing that as a family. I'm not sure how attended the show was on CNN, but we thought it was cool. God bless those poor engineers and planners who spend all that time building and programming the thing, then have to pretty-much sit on their hands until it gets there.

No pressure!

This image was incredibly cool

Image credit: NASA

It shows the Phoenix Lander parachuting down to Mars as seen from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance orbiter. I just can't seem to get my mind around the fact that one orbiting satellite was able to capture a second one coming down to land.

NASA - Phoenix Mission Page

NASA - Phoenix Images

Twitter / MarsPhoenix - The Mars Phoenix Lander Twitters! Who knew?

Phoenix (spacecraft) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

YouTube Shenanigans

So the giant "D" Silverman led me to waste considerable time on YouTube again yesterday.

He had posted a funny South Park spoof of Mac vs PC:

That led me to the "sequel" for Mac vs PC vs Linux:

And since we run a Novell network shop, I would be remiss to leave these Novell creations out:

Novell Launches Pro-Linux "Get a Mac" Spoofs - Cult of Mac from Wired.com

Who knew Linux was a girl?

--Claus

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Somebody's Lying to Me!

The other day I ran a Apple Software Update check to see if anything needed to be updated. I manually run this from time to time as I always delete it from my Auto-Start lists so it isn't constantly running in the background on my systems. It said my Apple software was up-to-date.

Hurrah!

Then I ran the Secunia Software Inspector.

It said that I have Safari for Windows version 3.525.12.0 installed, but that a newer version (3.525.17.0) is available that fixes some insecurities with the version i need. Thankfully it provided me a download link.

Curiously, the version I need to install is 3.1.1.

(Pssst. Apple? If you are reading this primarily Windows-centric blog, you need to take your versioning experts out back and beat them with an old Macintosh keyboard around the head to knock some sense into them. How does any sane person decrypt the fact that I have Safari for Windows version 3.525.12.0 installed, need to upgrade to version 3.525.17.0 by downloading and installing version 3.1.1?)

Clearly, someone's lying to me here.....anybody want to do a Dr. Phil and consult with Mr. Polygraph expert for fun and entertainment?

Don't expect to see this angle on the Mac/Windows ads...

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Fun Stuff and Mindless Diversions

Just some lightly entertaining tidbits I've found this week for the inner-geek

GraphJam: Pop culture for people in cubicles - Created by the mad-geniuses over at "I Can Has Cheezburger?", this site collects "facts" from popular culture and presents them in charts, tables and graphs for all your statistical enjoyment.

Some are quite understandable off the bat, but others may require referral to an accompanying "cheat-sheet" page. Usually a YouTube video to provide the context.

Some are a bit lame but others are pretty funny.

tachikoma snap - Tachikomas are the little AI robot spider-vehicles that support the Ghost in the Shell team. Full of character and personality, I think they are the real stars of that anime series. Anyway, dude has done some nice graphic work layering in images of tachikoma on top of "daily-life" photos. While most are not 100% photo-realistic, they are fun and entertaining for GITS fans.

Top 10 April Fools' Pranks for Nerds - Wired.

Some are good, most are weak. However for Apple Mac fans, there was a real gem hiding in there:

Troika - Newton Virus

See the YouTube video for the fun. I have no idea if this is a real software application or just some very clever graphic programming. According to the Wired post, it may be using the accelerometers built into the MacBooks to sense the orientation of the laptop then move the icons and bars accordingly.

True or fake, it still is really entertaining!

--Claus.

Sunday, February 03, 2008

Cures for Late-night Boredom

For some reason, I was very restless last night.

Couldn't go to bed.

So I stayed up a bit later than usual on the Webs.

Way past when all the folks who feed my RSS feed blogs went to bed.

It was quiet.

So I had to get off my usual well-worn paths and strike out.

So I ended up stumbling in and out of the late night Web-bars.

Figures on Stage

Blogger Play - (streaming photo website) - Blogger Play is a very clever website that appeals to the web voyeur in us all. It is simple. It is pure and it is captivating. Blogger collects all the images that are being uploaded to their Blogger Blogs and streams them against a zen-like black interface. No captions, no words. Just a stream of images. I never ran into any NSFW images, but I suppose it could be possible. I assume that Google is doing some filtering using their image-search filter algo's.

I found that if I set the speed down just a tad, I started making up stories to go along with them. Growing up, dad was a (very good) amateur photographer and captured 90% of his photography work in slide format. We kids and the parent's social friends would often get treated to the slide-projector carousel's "ca-chunk" for slide-shows that might feature family, nature, or cultural perspectives (pictures of Vietnam taken during dad's tour overseas there).

So with my mind semi-numb from fatigue, I caught myself staring at the random stream of images; here we were at the diner. There was this cool lizard there. There was grandma at her party. That's Marge's favorite fashion bag. This is the dam we drove over. Stuff like that.

Dinosaur comics - (webcomic) - No clue how I ended up here. Oh, yes. Via rogueclassicism. Anyway. It appears the format of this six-panel comic strip never changes. The frames are always the same. However the content is pretty clever and (at times) filled with biting satire or social commentary. Sometimes the strip bombs bad. Other times it really strikes a nerve. Sample strips: unpopular life goals, t-rex: bread, i should get some friggin' groceries!, i will call it, "sherlock holmes and the case of the mummy's curse!"

Created by the mad-genius: Ryan North.

Vera Brosgol's VeraBee - (graphic artist page) - Jumped here from Ryan's link page. According to Vera's bio, she came to the States from Russia and got into the animation and art scene. Lots of good work here. I really like the bold retro-feel of her pieces. Flirty and full of emotion, but never vulgar or trite. Good stuff!

Jim's FAIL Bar

Jim Thompson's recent blog-post "FAIL." really seems to (sorry about this) really hit it on the head. Here I am stressed out a bit about this big project I'm leading (but not in control of) and struggling with feelings of inadequacy and failure. Then he comes along and shows me there are a lot more losers and fail'ers than I have realized. Puts the whole thing into perspective, in a Good Way™.

Anyway, his post links to the site The FAIL Blog which has great photos of event-failures with cheesy "FAIL" captions. Kinda like I Can Has Cheezburger? but without as many cats.

That led me to the DOING IT WRONG blog and the Shipment of Fail. Two more sites that show failure on the grand and humorous-scale.

By-far cheaper than a therapist for folks with failure-issues.

YouTube Tavern

YouTube - Mindstorms Autofabrik - Dude(s) built an automated Lego-car factory using the Mindstorms components. Really slow-paced seven-minute production (will put your cat to sleep) but very cool for Lego fans. At least once.

YouTube - Lego Millenium Falcon Stop Motion - Dudes use stop-motion to film the building of a Lego Star Wars ship. Not very clever in-of-itself. However, catch all the details in how the pieces are handled as the come in for placement on the project. Lots of little gems make the whole a fun video.

I'm a big fan of the web-comic MegaTokyo. So imagine my surprise in finding some fan-made animations of the MegaTokyo gang.

YouTube - "Megatokyo: The Animation" Trailer Version 1 - Not a bad summary of what MegaTokyo is all about.

YouTube - Largovision - Fun video animation production of the world from Largo's viewpoint. Wouldn't have been nearly as good without the l33t soundtrack from Therion. Got to go get me the album on iTunes if available.

(More on Therion: Therion (band) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Metal, classical themes, and choirs. What's not to like? Don't get it? Maybe this will help; they are Sweeds. Enough said.

The Geek Diner

After checking out the cool Therion tattoo I drew on myself at 2 am, I figured I better start to come down from the site-hopping and drop into the geek diner for some Joe to settle me down.

DemoGirl - DemoGirl is Molly McDonald. She has figured out the cleverness of using screencasts to "demo" products and techniques related to technology and computing; others have done this already, but she does it pretty well. Nothing 'earthshattering" but the screencasts are short and concise and do seem to provide a good overview of the topic at hand. Samples: Tour of Firefox 3 Beta 2, Beautify your Firefox with Personas, Thoof - Cool service, but I don’t get your name.

Au | Geekdad from Wired.com - Neat photo of actual gold atoms. How cool is that? I remember being in high-school and seeing some fuzzy nebula-looking pictures that were supposedly the first images from the atomic level. I thought, "so what?" Now, I think "How cool is that!"

At this point of the night, everything seems to be taking on a weird glow. My eyes are failing me.

Oh! Never-mind. I'm on HDRwalls.com This website has quality High Dynamic Range wallpapers for Macs, Windows, and mobile devices. With almost 500 images, it really introduces you into the beauty of the HDR styled images. Good stuff. What's cool is that if you find one you like, you can select the screen size (from mega-monitor down to mobile-phone screen size) and download it.

Repent! The Morning Comes

So now it is Sunday. I better clean up my late-night wanderings.

Time to go to church: The Brick Testament

Some may find it irreverent, but it does have a message that cannot be overlooked.

I feel better.

Time for bed, little mouse.

--Claus

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Weekend Links Grab-Bag

I've been VERY busy these past few weeks and haven't had the time when I get home from work to do the quality blogging I expect (or pretend to).

Mostly my energy is consumed with my daily duties and a Mondo-Big technology deployment project I am leading right now.

So I have just been building a pile of links that caught my attention, and biding the time to post them.

Here you go.

In Firefox 3.0 News

I've enjoyed seeing the growth in development builds for the next Firefox release version 3.0 (a.k.a. Gran Paradiso).

The daily updated versions are known as "Minefield" and can be obtained from the Nightly Build link. But this is kinda dangerous and experimenters might want to stick with the Firefox 3 Alpha 7 version if you really want to play with it. (download link)

Anyway, the Minefield nightly versions are sporting some new features of note:

Color management support added to Firefox 3 - via Mozilla Links
Advanced bookmarking, tagging enters Firefox 3 - via Mozilla Links
Firefox 3 gets smooth tab scrolling - via Mozilla Links
First look to Firefox 3’s new download manager - via Mozilla Links

And the Firefox Extension Guru has a great tip on how to clean up your Firefox auto-spellcheck dictionary if you add a wrong word by mistake: Tip: Removing Added Words From Fx Dictionary.

I would be using Minefield almost exclusively now, except that my favorite RSS feed reader SAGE isn't compatible with it. I suspect it has something to do with Places and the bookmarking structure.

Windows Desktop Icon Management

At work I use a laptop connected via a dock-station to a 2nd monitor. With this arrangement I can run a dual-monitor setup that would only be better if I could convince my boss to spring for a third flatscreen that supports DVI input I might be set.

Anyway...my problem is then when I am away from the dock and in the field, even though I log in with my same Windows user profile, the lack of the dock brings my desktop icons up scattered all over the place and I have to rearrange them all.

So it was with excitement that I found this timely posts this past week:

Desktop Icon Position Save & Restore - CyberNet News

Ryan recommended using a registry hack method that allows you to have the ability to add "save desktop icon layout" and "restore desktop icon layout" items into your right-click context menu. Might be helpful for laptop/dock users.

Get the files here: Save and Restore Desktop Icon Layout in Windows Vista :: the How-To Geek

Ryan also recommended profile/desktop manager software called Shock Desktop (freeware) - XP/2000/Vista. It allows you to create several profiles for icon deployment under different screen resolution configurations. It can also bring desktop icons to the forefront over maximized windows for quick access via a key-combo toggle.

Cleaning up the Breadcrumbs in Vista

One feature that Vista offers is "breadcrumbs." This is a expanded file navigation interface that Microsoft hopes users will find easier to use to browser folder structures.

It is pretty cool.

I liked it so much I first added it to my XP systems with the freeware utility minimalist's Explorer Breadcrumbs.

Then I found a slightly more refined version called QT Address Bar and am now using it instead.

However, if you are using Vista and don't like that feature, Andreas Verhoeven created a free tool to remove Breadcrumbs from Vista: Disable Explorer Breadcrumbs in Windows Vista explained and hosted over on the How-To Geek website.

How Not to Build a PC

The riotous website DataDocktori'n illustrates how (not) to perform various desktop services including:

I'm thinking of including these techniques in a PowerPoint presentation at my next BJT session.

--Claus

Saturday, June 30, 2007

Grand Stream Dreams Blog - Rated ?

For Entertainment Purposes Only

I was hanging out over at Gillian's Gillianic Tendencies blog and was amused by the following post: Not that arbitrary tests and ratings by websites looking for free advertising really mean anything

Seems she had stumbled upon a website page at Mingle2 that will rate your blog/website according to movie-rating guidelines...or something like that.

Mingle2 - What's My Blog Rated? Find Out Your Film Rating

Gillian's blog rated "R" due to 5 cheeky words. Edgy girl, that Gillian!

Grand Stream Dreams - Family Friendly

So I bit and went on to put my main blog page in the tester:

Ahh! A family-friendly blog. Just what I wanted to find.

But then I surmised that it was only checking just the posts displayed on the main page.

What would happen if I put them all in?

Grand Stream Dreams - The Dark Side

I loaded in my blog's "backup-bookmark" to see what the rating would be based on all my posts. See this post for reference: Easy Blogger blog Backup Tip

Oh goodness!

Since my blog is primarily tech-related, I guess the tech world does have a much darker side!

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

dead (30x)
pain (22x)
kill (17x)
dangerous (14x)
hurt (13x)
xxx (8x)
steal (7x)
zombie (6x)
punch (5x)
gun (4x)
bastards (3x)
crap (2x)
suicide (1x)

So read this blog at your own risk, please....

How the Crowd stands:

Other blogs I enjoy had their current main-pages rated accordingly:

Dwight Silverman's Tech Blog: PG

Jim Thompson's Blog: G

Scott Hanselman's ComputerZen: G

Mark Russinovich's Sysinternals Blog: G

SunbeltBLOG: PG

VitalSecurity: PG

Kent Newsome's Blog: G

Rogue Classicism: R

The Japan Years: G

--Claus

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Azumanga Daioh Parody Video

Saw this short video over at the JapanSugoi blog. "The Wizard of Ozaka"

It involves Osaka and gang from Azumanga Daioh.

If you aren't an anime/manga fan, or adventure "quest" gamer you probably won't get all the references.

If you are...you will.

Full Japan Sugoi post with more info on the players.

Love the "ruby-slippers!"

--Claus

Saturday, April 21, 2007

TMTP! & IAPD to Boot!

(Too Much To Post! and It's a Pretty Day) to boot...

I think I've seen this commercial too many times and it's starting to rub off.

Although, to confess, while Alvis does talk like this sometimes...so far it isn't that often.

It's been about a week since I posted. I've collected a big pile of fun and fascinating links.

And it is pretty outside!

I think I am going to cut the yard, pull some weeds, then take the laptop outside on the porch and have at it.

Prepare for an onslaught of posts this weekend.

--Claus

Thursday, September 07, 2006

Rest, Relaxation, and Rollicking

I managed to grab a "play-day" today and will try to chill out doing some Su Doku puzzles (thanks Mike!) and blogging.

Chores for the day (Lavie says I can't take a day off without doing some kind of household chores...she's right!) include yard cutting, pruning (it's not quite season yet but our hibiscus plants keep growing like weeds), grocery shopping, and some mundane mopping.

My brother came over this weekend and showed off his beautiful Cannon Digital Rebel XT camera. We had lots of fun playing with it. It is very fast and can be controlled via USB directly from a computer (handy for making rock-steady shots). I was surprised how light the body was. Cannon will be releasing a new model, the XTi with 10.1 Megapixel sensor and a larger 2.5" LCD screen.....Hmmm....I don't have one yet. Do I go with a (likely to be cheaper) XT model or the newer XTi model.....Darn Cannon!

At the end of the day he ended up leaving his GITS:SAC DVD collection he loaned me at our house (again), and he made off with my prescription "cop-sunglasses" left in the door of his truck. Oh well, just another excuse for bro's to get together again.

He did share with me a rollicking well made video: Battlefield 2 - The Pwned Life. It's a satiric documentary of soldiers' lives in the multi-player pc game Battlefield 2. Very well done and a real riot of laughs! The narrator sounds quite a bit like StrongBad to me....

Terribly not Safe for Work! (Strong Language, Game Violence, Strong likelihood of breaking a rib laughing)

Sorry--no embedded video due to content. Click a link...

Battlefield 2 - The Pwned Life (Google Video) (also on YouTube)

If that type of humor isn't your thing, here is one that is safe for the whole family:

Hamster Wheel Gone Wrong....Run little guy, run....!

It's not Friday just yet, but TikiBar is hosting a wonderful tech-term loaded episode "Son of the Internet" pondering bandwidth, bandheight, a bluescreen,and....oh who cares?! Bring on Lala in 16:9 goodness!

What do you get when someone named Jon Swift reviews books on Amazon.com that he hasn't read yet? Wickedly funny social commentary!

Example:

Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America:

I love Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, January 16, 2006
I have not actually read this book but I love the movie with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. I thought it was very funny and very imaginative with all of the alien creatures. I don't remember the movie saying anything about the Supreme Court but I know they often change books when they adapt them into movies. Even though I agree with everything Justice Scalia says he does sometimes seem like an alien from another planet, which I mean in a good way.

Pretty clever.....
--Claus

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Life Backups

After dealing with almost losing a server the week before last, including both my primary and mirror drives, and looking the horror of a full-server restore from tape squarely in the eye....this t-shirt brought to my attention by the ever-graceful Gillian made me chuckle in a cathartic way.

Being a sysadmin presents one with an entirely different perspective on the world, sometimes....

--Claus

Sunday, August 06, 2006

In the Mood for Hot Coffee?

In the mood for some "steaming hot coffee"?

Yeah, unless you are "of a certain generation" this probably isn't what you are thinking....

Link here. (REALLY SFW)

--Claus

Saturday, July 01, 2006

Hitler's Ghost and a Deep Hole

The other day when trolling the web for American propaganda posters from World War II, I came across this:

What History Doesn't Tell You: The Unknown Stories of WWII

A satiric look at the "truth" behind some propaganda posters...or not.

Damn Interesting >> The Deepest Hole The Kola Superdeep Borehole was Russia's attempt (begun in 1962) to deep drill a hole through the earth's upper crust to the layer where the upper-mantle region meets it. In 1994 they finally gave up at a depth of approximately 7.5 miles, but only because the rock became too soft for the hole to remain intact when they had to pull the drill.

It is a fascinating article on an obscure "science race" the Russian scientists and Americans pitted each other against. Some of the scientific findings are amazing to consider. Even today a new project The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program seeks to try again--in a new location.

Isn't history fun?
--Claus

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Ear Aches and a Songbird is released

Day two of Alvis ear ache watch. She is still under the weather. Bummer.

Heard two stories on NPR that were interesting: "Solving the Mystery of Mother-Daughter Speak" and "Why Kids Hate to Wear Coats." I almost never wear a coat--unless it is like below freezing. I remember all those fights with mom and dad growing up over coats and cold-weather. Alvis is the same way. I don't really worry about it. If she doesn't want to wear one, fine. (And no, that's not the reason she now has an earache, mom!) I just make sure we take along a light-jacket (just in case she changes her mind). But if you think about it, we don't spend too much time outside. Just dashing from house to car and from car into school or work, then back to car and back to house. We don't spend much extended periods of time outside in the winter. I do keep a coat in the trunk of my car, just in case I end up with a breakdown and have to change a tire.

Anyway, while Alvis was napping after a heavy morning of channel-surfing between Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, and Animal Planet, I did a little web-surfing.

Yesterday I mentioned GreatNews. Two updates to my post regarding that product. First, I couldn't find a quick way to convert my RSS feeds in Sage over to it since it can only import XML format files. Well, turns out Sage has a built-in XML format export feature. A couple of clicks and I had all my feeds exported to GreatNews. Handy. Now I can do a better comparison between the two. I'll let you know as I spend more time with it.

I also mentioned that it allows users to organize feeds into folders, and that I wondered if I could do the same in Sage. My RSS feed list is about 40 feeds long (today). I have had them arranged based on hierarchy of interest; with my favorites at top and less frequently followed at the bottom. That's nice enough, but I still have to drag that slider bar down to scroll them all quickly. I opened up the Firefox Bookmark Manager, opened the Sage folder, then started adding folders and dragging/dropping the feeds accordingly. I very quickly had them all regrouped into about 10 folders. I ran a feed update and Wollah! it worked! Nice! Only bad thing is that the folder names don't go "bold" if they are closed and a feed inside is updated with new content. So you still have to expand to see if there are any updated feeds--but it is much easier to use now. (Note: While on the Sage site, I noticed the screenshot shows the feeds in folders--doh--wish I had noticed that sooner.)

Songbird is now out in an Alpha release. (Note: if beta programs scare you, then don't mess with alpha versions!) Songbird is an attempt to merge a Mozilla (Firefox) browser base with an open-source media player (ala iTunes). The interface is very iTunes'ish. The benefit is that it isn't DRM based like iTunes so you should have more control over what you do with your music. Interesting concept. I'll be keeping my eye on this--though I really do like iTunes. (Spotted over on DownloadSquad.) Right now it looks like the Songbird site is getting hammered right now....

More Video Funny:
Is your IT job creating communication issues with your significant other?
Terry Tate The Office Linebacker.

Tech tip finds:
GoogleSightseeing: Not a Google site, but see what gems can be spotted on GoogleEarth.
Browser Archive: Evolt.org is hosting (for your download pleasure) just about every web-browser there ever was.
Old Version and Wounded Moon: Two smackdown-good sites that host "older" versions of software. Sometimes newer isn't better and the distributors don't make those older versions accessible on their sites.
Azureus: Azureus is an open source bittorrent download manager. I don't really ever use bittorrent except when downloading some Linux Live CD distributions. When I do, this is what I use. Basically, with normal web downloads, you connect to the server and download the file--in one chunk--directly to your pc. When you have a really big file it can take a while--especially if that file is popular. Bittorrent managers identify the file you want to download, finds multiple copies of it on the web from other users, and downloads "bits" of the program from all over. It helps speed up transfer times and conserve network bandwidth. Paul Stamatiou took the time to write a nice guide on how new users can configure Azureus.

Hope you are enjoying clear skies!
--Claus