stillhq.com : Mikal, a geek from Canberra living in Silicon Valley

An occasional rant about spam

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 00:38:00 GMT

mikal@daedalus:~/blog-comments$ find . -type f -name "*.yes" | wc -l
664
mikal@daedalus:~/blog-comments$ find . -type f -name "*.no" | wc -l
18361
mikal@daedalus:~/blog-comments$ find . -type f -name "*.blocked" | wc -l
32111
mikal@daedalus:~/blog-comments$ find . -type f -name "*.badword" | wc -l
5007
mikal@daedalus:~/blog-comments$ du -sh
506M    .

664 real comments on this site, 18361 I manually said no to, 32111 were blocked based on originating IP, and 5007 contained a bad word. Andrew currently donates 506 mb of disk to hosting just comments. That seems excessive to me. I'll take the time to cleanup the disk usage in the next couple of days.

Tags for this post: blog() spam() comment()

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Dell e310 upgrade

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 01:35:00 GMT

I'm starting to get annoyed with the reliability of the USB chip sets in my external disks (of which I have six), so I am considering upgrading to a home theatre style case for my Dell e310 so I can have room to move the disks to inside the case. There are of course warts -- the Dimension e310 appears to have a BTX mother board ( which causes people pain ). Additionally, no one seems to make a BTX home theatre PC case, which sucks.

So, I might end up having to replace the entire machine, which isn't so cool. I'm gonna put all of this on hold until I can apply more thought to it.

Tags for this post: blog() toys() dell() machine() upgrade() btx() home() theatre()

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Free on demand from Comcast

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 04:32:00 GMT

Catherine and I have had analog Comcast cable TV in the US since we moved into our apartment here. We've resisted going digital because of the brain dead requirement that you use the Comcast set top box (which sucks), and therefore it not working with MythTV. If they shipped a digital decoder card which worked in a PCI slot with Linux, I would upgrade right away.

I've told them that a bunch of times, and they've offered us free upgrades about four times.

In the end they must have got the hint, because they just gave us a free "on demand" digital box for our analog cable. It's free for a year, and appears to be a Motorola DCT 700, which seems to just be a embedded computer which uses a two megabit connection to Comcast to deliver programs.

Now I'm meant to be activating the device, but I've been on hold with Comcast for 15 minutes. The user documentation even promises the call should only take three to four minutes. Of course plugging the MythTV box into the back of the Motorola box also broke our existing analog reception, so I might end up giving on the call and backing out the cabling change until Comcast gets with the program...

More device gossip as it comes to hand.

Tags for this post: blog() toys() motorola() comcast() analog() digital() set() top() box() on() demand() free()

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Debugging reboot problems with a n800?

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 03:45:00 GMT

The n800 seems to be spontaneously rebooting, which is very annoying. It's also at the same time going through a lot more battery life when idle than I would expect. Does anyone know of a good tool for tracking down what the device thinks is happening (I don't have R&D mode installed on the machine).

Tags for this post: blog() toys() n800() reboot() problem() battery() life()

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Let it be known I am open to bribes

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 12:34:00 GMT

My subsidised Nokia N800 arrived today, and I've been playing with it a little. It's not immediately obvious how to install software, let alone get root on the thing so you can start developing. More details as I find my way around the wiki.

Tags for this post: blog() toys() nokia() n800() development()

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Ordered: Nokia N800

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 07:19:00 GMT

I get to start playing in two days.

Tags for this post: blog() toys() nokia() n800()

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I think I've worked out the problem with the hotel network

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 01:55:00 GMT

30437 packets transmitted, 21115 received, +3 errors, 30% packet loss, time 38021698ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 12.129/64.408/5570.688/243.437 ms, pipe 6

Tags for this post: blog() hotel() internet() network() icmp()

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Places I have worked from in the last two weeks

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 14:36:00 GMT

I have worked from Mountain View, Lake Tahoe, Monterey, two kinds of buses, and a rental car in the last two weeks. I guess that might explain why I am so behind on email. I'm also doing page layout reviews for the MythTV book, which is exciting, but takes a lot of time.

The reality? If you're email is important, I will probably get back to you as soon as I can. Sorry.

Tags for this post: blog() travel() work() busy()

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I've worked out why I'm tired

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 15:46:00 GMT

Bad night's sleep (Matt's sick), 100 pages of technical book read, five loads of washing, 50 pages of kids book, a trip to the computer store and toy store with the kids. I think I know why I am tried.

Tags for this post: blog() tired()

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Random idea

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 11:45:00 GMT

I'm tired after a trip, so this is short and incoherent. You know how Sun used to hand out demo hardware for evals a couple of months ago? I wonder if they'd give me one to try MythTV backend on? I wonder if it would suck?

Tags for this post: blog() toys() mythtv() sun() demo() hardware() test()

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Bachelor cooking

Sun, 07 Jan 2007 12:35:00 GMT

Picante chicken: take 1.5 cups of picate sauce from the bottle. Add 3 tablespoons of brown sugar. Add 1 tablespoon of mustard. Mix. Add cut up bits of chicken. Cook at 400F for 20 minutes. Serve with rice.

Tags for this post: blog() bachelor() cooking()

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Avoidance behaviour, or, wanted: video RSS feeds

Sun, 07 Jan 2007 03:05:00 GMT

I'm avoiding doing paper work for work, and chapter edits for the MythTV book by writing a video aggregator. I have Media RSS feeds working, and normal RSS 2.0 with enclosures working. I have two questions:

Are there any other feed formats I should worry about?
What are some good (as in not horribly boring) feeds that I should now watch?

That's right, I built the aggregator, before I had anything to aggregate. Now I have this hammer, and must hit things with it... I'll talk more about the aggregator itself when I've done a little more testing, but I think it's pretty cool.

Tags for this post: blog() rss() media() video() aggregator()

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ScobleShow only available as MP4?

Sun, 07 Jan 2007 02:23:00 GMT

I've been playing with a new video aggregator (more details later!), and wanted some content, so I headed over to scobleshow.com. I'm disappointed to see that the videos only appear to be available as MP4s, and that the feed doesn't use anything but enclosures -- I was hoping for something nicer like Media RSS which would let him have content in lots of other formats.

It just seems silly to me that if I watch a video on a laptop or a television, that it has to be encoded for an iPod... Especially if he's using a nice high resolution camera, and then throwing all those extra pixels out...

Tags for this post: blog() video() scoble() scobleshow() rss()

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Video4Linux 2 webcam applications?

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 03:49:00 GMT

Hi, I've spent some time poking around for a video4linux 2 webcam application which doesn't suck. All I want is something very simple -- grab a frame from the specified camera and dump it to a file on disk in a format I can use. I don't want a config file. I don't want a web server. I don't want it to scp the file somewhere. Just grab a frame.

I can't find such a thing. I have some code myself which nearly does the job, but it's video4linux 1 and needs a rewrite. Should I just give in a write the code myself?

Tags for this post: blog() toys() video4linux() v4l2() webcam() application() linux()

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Tick of death

Fri, 29 Dec 2006 15:59:00 GMT

It's times like this that I don't mind that people make fun of me for using RAID 1+0 on my home server. One of my Seagate 400gb PATA drivers emits a ticking noise and is no longer detected by any of my Linux boxes. I don't think that's a good sign for the data on that machine. Luckily, the RAID array can run in degraded mode for a bit until a new disk arrives.

Now to find out how much Seagate warranty support sucks.

Tags for this post: blog() toys() seagate() disk() ticking() noise()

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Microsoft taints bloggers with free laptops... or, whiney bitches win again!

Fri, 29 Dec 2006 03:01:00 GMT

A guy I know from Canberra (he was a consultant and we were a consultee last time we met, please note that the consultation was at a Microsoft centric ISV, and paid for by Microsoft. Then again, we never took any of the advice because our management at the time still feel that the Internet is a passing fad and wouldn't know a current trend if it jumped out and bit them) scored a free laptop from Microsoft.

The premise is that it's a 64 bit laptop running Vista, and he's meant to be so astounded by it's coolness that he blogs all about it. There no risk of that occurring, he's pretty much in Microsoft's pocket anyways.

Then again, he's so much in Microsoft's pocket that he's a MVP. There is no perception of bias there -- everyone knows he works for a Microsoft backed consultancy, is an MVP, and gets back rubs from Frank Arrigo, Microsoft Australia's head developer back rubber (full disclosure again, Frank used to be my assigned Microsoft ISV buddy -- apparently that meant that we both took it in turns to ignore email from each other).

Back to the story. So, some other bloggers noticed that they hadn't got laptops for free, perhaps because they are whiney bitches, and raised a stink. Unfortunately Microsoft doesn't have the courage of their convictions, and have now asked those bloggers to get rid of the machines after writing some reviews.

Get a grip people. Microsoft, you should be ashamed of backing down. Blogosphere, you should investigate the perception of bias a bit more before making random accusations. Frank, where's my back rub?!?

Anyways, here's what I said in a comment on Mitch's blog:

Mitch,

(long time no see).

I'd kinda assumed that the machine was a standard "kick back" to Microsoft MVPs -- you are still one, right?

While I wont say I'm a big Microsoft supporter (I work for a competitor, have been using Linux for the last 10 years, and am finally Windows free), it seems to me that it's fair enough for Microsoft to provide training resources to MVPs. Don't you also get flights to Redmond, copies of MSDN, a back rub from Frank?

It seems to me that most of the complaining comes down to jealousy. Especially if you disclosed the machine as a gift.

Oh, and Microsoft taking it back again (or dictating how to dispose of the machine) just leaves me with the impression that Microsoft lacks the courage of their convictions. Surely if individual bloggers thought there was a tainting issue they are big enough to resolve that for themselves without a mandate from above?

Mikal

And unlike Microsoft, I stand by my opinion.

Tags for this post: blog() microsoft() vista() payperpost() whiney() bitches()

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Jon's Nokia E61 WEP problems

Wed, 27 Dec 2006 03:26:00 GMT

Jon is having problems getting WEP to work on his new Nokia but he doesn't have comments turned on so I can't reply to him on his blog. There are a couple of people at work who have claimed to get this working. It's not a work day today, but I will ping them tomorrow and see if I can get their instructions for you...

Tags for this post: blog() toys() nokia() e61() wep()

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Fedex sucks

Mon, 25 Dec 2006 04:18:00 GMT

It turns out that seemingly no one in my apartment complex has got a delivery from Fedex in the last week or so... It would seem the local driver is simply too lazy to actually deliver packages. I guess that makes it a little hard for people who are waiting for those last few Christmas presents to arrive. In our case it was something medical, which makes it worse in my mind.

Oh, and guess what? There's no refund process from Fedex, even though they have failed to deliver on their product (three day shipping, we've waited six so far). So, no more Fedex for me.

Tags for this post: blog() fedex() sucks()

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Very behind in email land

Mon, 25 Dec 2006 03:30:00 GMT

Excuses as to why I haven't read email from others, or blog posts, in a while:

It's the holiday season, less time on the computer
Having the last couple of chapters of a book due
Getting ready for my three or four talks clustered around the linux.conf.au 2007 trip (the conference tutorial, one or two mini-conference talks, and a talk at SLUG)
A road trip to Phoenix via LA
Andrew being sick with something that looks a lot like Giardia for the last three weeks
It's the end of the quarter, gotta meet those goals!

I'll catch up one day.

Tags for this post: blog() email() latency()

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Email subscription to comments

Sun, 26 Nov 2006 04:28:00 GMT

Hey all. Yesterday I finally got around to implementing email subscriptions to comments on posts in my custom comment module code for Blosxom. I run a custom comment module because of the static generation mode I use for the site, which helps reduce load on Andrew's server.

Email subscription to comments on a post that you have commented on is the default, but it is easy for the user to turn it off. If you post and opt for email, you'll also get an email when your own post survives moderation, which might be useful for some people.

It will be interesting to see if willingness to be emailed a comment is an effective spam signal or not -- so far with a sample of six spam comments, it seems to be evenly split between the two options, which is interesting because it means some spam bots are smart enough to turn the check box off. Or are they using a POST without using my form at all?

(That makes me wonder if moving the URL for the submission CGI might reduce spam...)

If there is any interest in a public release of my uber crap perl code let me know, and I might try and find the time to clean it up.

Tags for this post: blog() spam() blosxom() static() email() subscription()

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