stillhq.com : Mikal, a geek from Canberra living in Silicon Valley (no blather posts)

Blog spam

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 13:14:00 GMT

I occasionally complain about blog spam, but it seems I should take special time to mention that there have now been over 400,000 spam comments on stillhq.com. Specifically, the site current tells me "1335 comments today, 1335 of them spam. 401209 comments ever, 400220 of the spam.". Dear spammers -- you suck.

I wonder if there is anything useful which can be done with all this spam? Just in case, its available at http://www.stillhq.com/allcomments/.

Tags for this post: blog() spam()

Comment

Internet traffic

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 11:34:00 GMT

I estimate (badly, I might add) that I currently use about 200gb of Internet traffic on my DSL link a month. If I'm going to move back to Australia sometime, that's going to become a killer. Unfortunately, because my ISP doesn't bill for traffic here in the US, they don't appear to track my use at all. I think it might be time for me to do some tracking myself.

So, one of life's little questions. Do I use pcap to snarf traffic on the DSL, or use iptable's conntrack stuff in /proc? Just one more thing to ponder.

Tags for this post: blog()

Comment

It seems planet is a bit too trusting with dates?

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:55:00 GMT

It seems that planet is a bit too trusting with dates. For example, if you have a post with a date well into the future, then you can keep that post at the top of the planet output until that date comes around. Its interesting that no one has used that maliciously yet.

You can see an example of what I'm talking about at Planet Linux Australia, where some forward dated posts sit at the top of the page...

Tags for this post: blog()

Comment

Bypassing Australia's imminent internet filter

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:25:00 GMT

Paul has thoughts on how to avoid Rudd's internet filter. I am left wondering why he doesn't just suggest Tor though. Its designed for exactly this sort of censorship, requires no account in another country, and is cross platform. The only catch is that Tor does block some traffic (for example bittorrent), so you can't just use it for all your traffic.

Tags for this post: blog()

Comment

Comcast Lies

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:59:00 GMT

I know you're all dying to hear about how much Comcast sucks. I imagine that what is happening is that I am suffering under Comcast discovering that during an economic downturn people start cancelling optional services like expensive pay TV. Anyways, several weeks ago Comcast jacked up our bill (nearly doubling it), so we called. They said "try this other line up which is cheaper". We said "ok". After a day or so it was evident that the service didn't work, and we created a service order. The installer came out, had a look, and said that the service we had been sold could never have worked because we were analog customers and needed digital to get the channels we had been sold. Anyways, he convinced us to convert to digital, and that got us a new low rate again. Until the bill came and was double what we had been told by the installer's dispatcher it would be.

So we rang Comcast yet again. They said we were lying and had to pay the higher rate. I explained that calling my wife a liar was a bad plan, and they could either honour the stated rate or we'd cancel. The account is now cancelled, so you can see how that ended.

I know that Comcast has a reputation for terrible customer service, but this is the first time I've experienced it. Wow, such arrogance. To be honest, I'm glad we cancelled the account. I can get two 4-disk-at-a-time deals from Netflix for what the low rate was meant to be with Comcast (yes, we could have got 16 disks at once with what Comcast wanted us to pay). What we'll probably do is some combination of free to air, Netflix DVDs, Netflix streaming, and buying DVDs for the kids. All up we'll end up with more content, at a higher quality, for less money. So there you go.

Tags for this post: blog()

Comment

Australian Commonwealth Government expenditure on Microsoft product licensing

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 20:14:00 GMT

An email thread on the CLUG list got me curious about expenditure on Microsoft products by the Australian Commonwealth Government. It turns out the new Rudd government requires all departments to list all contracts over $100,000 on their website twice a year (admittedly I was tipped off to this by yet another mail thread, this one on the Link mailing list). So I dug through and pulled out the details. Note that where it wasn't possible to determine what the expenditure was for I left it out -- for example it seems many departments buy IT licenses from a reseller, and those are reported as lump sums. Sometimes I have included consulting services as well, which might not be 100% fair.

This only took about an hour to generate, which was much easier than I realized.

Department	Expenditure	Source URL
Parliament House	$740,040	Source
Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry	--	Source
Attorney General's	$1,046,133 $118,140	Source
Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy	--	Source
Department of Defense	$469,700 $275,001 $11,704,345 $226,270 $519,982 $259,325 $1,432,000 $1,432,000 $972,400 $235,750	Source for Defense Source for DMO
Education, Employment and Workplace Relations	$4,500,000 $160,000 $580,160 $1,819,356 $201,108	Source
Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts	--	Source
Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs	--Source
Finance and Deregulation	--	Source
Foreign Affairs and Trade	--	Source
Health and Ageing	$340,560 $1,159,639 $1,161,466	Source
Human Services	--	Source
Immigration and Citizenship	$2,149,930	Source
Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government	--	Source
Innovation, Industry, Science and Research	$425,676 $2,608,992	Source
Prime Minister and Cabinet	$543,000	Source
Resources, Energy and Tourism	--	Source
The Tresury	--	--
	Total: $35,080,973

As best as I can tell, that's for a six month period. If correct, that would make the use of Microsoft software about a $70 million decision annually.

Tags for this post: blog()

Comment

Top Gear Australia, again

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 11:17:00 GMT

Ok, so the second episode is better. Perhaps its just taking the presenters some time to find their "voice". However, I do think the studio stuff still tries too hard to be Top Gear UK. The challenge was excellent, except Clarkson would have found a way to destroy the utes.

Tags for this post: blog()

Comment

The Sarah Jane Adventures

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 16:00:00 GMT

We picked up a couple of Sarah Jane Adventures (yet another Doctor Who spinoff, this one centered around a former companion of a previous Doctor, and targetted at children) from Netflix. To be honest, its not my thing -- the acting isn't as good, the effects are cheaper, and the plot lines simplistic. Then again, it is aimed at kids, and my two certainly seem to like it.

Tags for this post: blog()

Comment

Top Gear Australia

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 19:45:00 GMT

I thought the first episode was ok, but I am left wondering what's different about the show from the original UK version apart from the accents. Oh, and they didn't show us a picture of the track, which I found annoying -- the UK version bothered to explain the design of the track and why it has the corners it does. Anyway, better than nothing while Top Gear is off the air.

Tags for this post: blog()

Comment

Wondering how low it can go

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 08:12:00 GMT

Perhaps this is something that only people living overseas but paying mortgages in Australia care about, but I am amazed by the size and speed of the drop of the Australian dollar against the US dollar. This graph helps explain what I mean:

(Stolen from Yahoo! Finance)

That's a big correction. I wonder where the bottom will be? Should I move money now? Should I wait? I guess its time to consider dollar cost averaging my exposure to the forex market.

Tags for this post: blog()

Comment

Does anyone else think its odd

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:06:00 GMT

Does anyone else think it is odd that my kid's school had a "code red alert" drill this morning? This is where they have the whole school pretend that there is a gun toting maniac on campus, and the class goes to a corner and hides. They practise being quiet while someone beats on the door, that sort of thing.

I find the whole thing just a little disturbing.

Tags for this post: blog()

Comment

Open Source video creation

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:53:00 GMT

For the upcoming MythNetTV release I am toying with the idea of asking the user if its ok to include a default subscription to an announcement video blog. This blog could be used to inform MythNetTV users of things like new releases, and important bug fixes if such things happen.

This raises the question -- if I wanted to mix creative commons licensed music with some still images (the announcements), what tool is the best to do that? Specifically open source tools please.

Tags for this post: blog()

Comment

A day in San Francisco

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 09:28:00 GMT

Most of the folks I work with actually live in San Francisco and commute down to Mountain View each day. I wouldn't be willing to do such a long commute each day (especially given San Francisco isn't my favorite city), but I am willing to do it occasionally. I spent yesterday in the San Francisco office, which means all those guys could have a break from commuting. I might end up doing this more regularly if we can work out the logistics a bit better.

The commute was a bit insane. Light rail from my house to Castro Street in Mountain View. The Caltrain shuttle to work. Then a work run shuttle to San Francisco. At least I didn't have to do the light rail in the evening -- Catherine and the kids picked me up from work. All up I think I spent about two and a half hours commuting yesterday.

The San Francisco office is really nice, and I got to bump into a bunch of people I haven't seen in ages like Chris (who used to take me shooting in Phoenix). That worked out well because apparently I should visit some folks in the Seattle office next week, even though I didn't realize they existed until yesterday.

(Have I mentioned that I am in Seattle next week for SIGCOMM 2008 yet? I don't think I have. I am in Seattle next week -- let me know if you're there and want to have a coffee or something. I probably wont make it out to Redmond or Kirkland though because I wont have a car.)

Anyways, while in San Francisco I made an effort to go to the Pirate supply store at 826 Valencia -- San Francisco's only independently owned pirate supply store. It was cool. I knew the trip was coming up, so for the last week I've asked people to recommend second hand science fiction books stores in San Francisco as my gtalk status message... Its cool that three people replied with recommendations, and all of them said that I should go to Borderlands Books. The store is small, but had a great selection. The best David Drake, Roger McBride Allen, and Terry Pratchett collections that I have seen in any bookstore so far. Finally, we went to Ritual Roasters for a coffee. They make a good coffee, and have a cool logo. A bit crowded though. All of this was for my first time in the Mission as well, which was an interesting place. A lot like Newtown, but with more hispanic people and a lot dirtier.

So, I think I'm trying to say I had fun. I'll be going back to the San Francisco office again I am sure.

Tags for this post: blog()

Comment

Chilis

Sun, 18 May 2008 20:09:00 GMT

I hadn't been to Chili's (a chain restaurant in the US) in about four years, and we couldn't decide where to go for dinner. Given that all I remembered about Chilis was that they had good margaritas, and the kids menu looked ok online, off we went to give them a try.

They sucked. The service was extraordinarily slow (30 minutes+), the food was uninspired and over cooked, and my serving was too small. At least they weren't all that expensive.

This post is made in the hope that I'll remember not to go again.

Tags for this post: blog()

Comment

Offline Thunderbird

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 18:21:00 GMT

Hi. I'm trying to work out a simple config option to have Thunderbird sync all of my folders when I go offline, instead of the ones I've had to select in the config dialog. I can't see any documentation on how to do that... Does anyone know if its possible?

Tags for this post: blog()

Comment

On the Sorkonian theme

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 09:12:00 GMT

That is, talking about Aaron Sorkin. Steve mentions that the West Wing wasn't as good after Aaron left. I'd have to agree with that, and you can tell from the scripts that Aaron had left... The dialog wasn't as clever, and the plot line became more about entrenched political positions and a failure to have a mandate than it was about hope and changing the world. Then again, the final season was pretty good as well -- even if they did have to rewrite the ending.

Tags for this post: blog() movies()

Comment

The common thread

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 10:28:00 GMT

What do A Few Good Men, The American President, The West Wing, and Charlie Wilson's War all have in common, apart from that I really liked them? They were all written by Aaron Sorkin. Therefore, I should like anything Aaron does. Noted.

Tags for this post: blog() movies()

Comment

Via M10000, video, and a Belkin wireless USB thing

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 15:25:00 GMT

I've had a Via Eden M10000 literally lying around since soon after I moved to the US two years ago, and I finally decided that it was time for a full blown home workstation the other day, having got fed up with the small screen on my laptops. Sometimes I really miss my 30 inch monitor at work, and the 24 inch I am using at home is a much better substitute than a laptop screen.

Anyway, getting the machine working was surprisingly difficult given its a three or four year old design. The problems:

The PCI 802.11g wireless card didn't work. In fact, the machine wouldn't boot with it installed. I suspect this was a PCI version problem, as I have had pain with this card in the past.
The PCI 802.11b wireless card I tried next wasn't much better. The connection would drop out randomly, and the machine would occasionally lock up. This was the card I used as my first access point about six years ago (using hostap), so perhaps its just old. It got swapped out as well.
The Belkin USB 802.11g thingie didn't work reliably. It would stay connected to the network for five minutes before something went wrong. This made me annoyed, especially when it turns out this is because the latest release of Ubuntu (gutsy) installs an old version of the rt73usb driver, which is known not to work with this card. Following these instructions from the canonical wiki which tell you to install drivers from here fixed the problem. Its annoying that Ubuntu ships with known broken drivers though.
Next, video. The video card built into the mother board sucks. I'm running a t24 inch LCD at 1920x1200, and there was significant ghosting on the monitor. Additionally, I couldn't run at 24 bit, I had to use 16 bit because the video card was running out of RAM bandwidth.
Not to worry, I installed a Matrox G450 I had lying around, and now the monitor works nicely as well, with no ghosting.
Finally, the whole thing is much louder than I expected from an Eden machine (there is a fan on the board, a fan in the case, and the hard disk). Then again, given I built the entire machine for $90, I can't complain too much.

Tags for this post: blog() toys()

Comment

Hurrah!

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 13:13:00 GMT

Catherine (who is in California while I swan around Texas) reports that the maliciously loud neighbours are moving out! Yay for sleep!

Tags for this post: blog()

Comment

Catherine is right

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 08:43:00 GMT

Catherine is right -- when we move back from America we wont be living in an apartment if I have any say in it.

Tags for this post: blog()

Comment