Mt. Molelog

Pan Version Names 0.14.0.92-0.14.2.90

Updating my previous list of Pan version names:

• 0.14.0.92 - She’s so good-looking but she just crumbles and burns
• 0.14.0.93 - He’s Upstairs, Helping Porcelain Make the Bed
• 0.14.0.94 - Jubal’s Hollow. Are You? (Link requires a time machine)
• 0.14.0.95 - Pan Contains 70 Lines of SCO Code
• 0.14.0.96 - Fair and Balanced
• 0.14.1 - This is not a psychotic episode. It’s a cleansing moment of clarity.
• 0.14.2 - This is not a psychotic episode. It’s a cleansing moment of clarity. (Duplicate name used)
• 0.14.2.90 - A Bouquet of Corpses
• 0.14.2.91 - As She Crawled Across the Table

2005-06-25 17:40:22 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Software

.xxx vs .kids.us

CNN is reporting that ICANN is moving ahead with a plan to create a ‘.xxx’ domain for adult (ie, porn) sites.

This is even stupider than .kids.us, and that’s saying a lot. Back in 2002, Congress passed the The Dot Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act to create a safe haven for kids-friendly websites. Neustar has the contract to run it and keep it kids-friendly; back in late 2002/early 2003, they were very optimistic about how many sites there woudl be, or at least they claimed to be. The goal was to have enough content in .kids.us that parents could use a whitelist filter on the internet — if everything a kid wants is in .kids.us, or at least enough of it is, then they don’t need to venture out into the scary world of .com.

.kids.us registration opened September 4, 2003. More than a year and a half later, how many .kids.us domains are there?

As far as I can tell, the full list is:

• A
• Abckids
• Americaslibrary
• Firstgov
• Games
• Info
• KNEX
• Minnesota
• Mummies
• Music
• NOAA
• NewYork
• News
• Nick
• Nickjr
• PBSKids
• Smithsonian
• Space
• Stnicholas
• Summum
• Switchzoo
• Trampoline
• Trampolines
• Us

Wow, 24 domains! Trampoline and Trampolines have identical content, but we’ll let that slide. Oh, yeah: a, info, music, space, games, us, newyork and news are all from the same people. And Summum and Mummies have the same content. Nick and NickJR are both Nickelodeon, of course. So those 24 domains are 22 unique sets of content from 14 different companies. Is that enough to replace the rest of the internet, you think?

So, will .xxx do even worse than this? No, I don’t think so — I expect there will be a couple hundred domains within the first few months it’s live, even at $60/year. But they won’t be new sites, and they won’t replace existing sites. They won’t do anything to ‘clean up’ the other domains. So, will it make it easier for customers to find their smut? Well, maybe, but it’s hardly ilke that’s hard now. So what’s the point?

The point is, it’s a way for a ‘legit’ company to siphon off $60/year from pretty much every major porn site. it’s a way for someone to make money from the smut industry without having to get into the smut business. I understand why ICM Registry Inc. is in favor of it. I don’t understand why ICANN is.

2005-06-01 23:13:14 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Internet::DNS

iTunes "all unchecked tracks" Smart Playlist

iTunes makes it pretty easy to make a Smart Playlist for "all checked songs" -- not quite as easy as it should be, but pretty easy: make a smart playlist for all tracks that match any of the conditions "Artist contains A" and "Artist does not contain A" and check the "match only checked songs" option.

You can use that playlist to create an "all unchecked tracks" smart playlist; if you call that playlist "all checked", then create a new smart playlist with the criteria "Playlist is not all checked"; on this one you don't want the "Match only checked songs" option.

This may require iTunes 4.5. At least, I didn't figure it out till 4.5, and I'm hoping it's because the "playlist is not" option wasn't there before.

This is useful if you have an iPod and use the 'sync only checked tracks' option, and want to keep track of what tracks you have turned off.

2004-05-17 01:45:00 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Macintosh

iTunes/iPod "An unknown error occured (-36)"

While syncing an iPod, iTunes' error message "An unknown error occured (-36)" indicates an input/output error. In my case, it was while readin the source file; I don't know if the same error could indicate a write error.

If you happen to be watching while the error occurs, you can tell the problem file that way. If you're doing a long sync, though, who wants to keep watching?

In this case, fs_usage(1) comes in handy. If you run "sudo fs_usage -w iTunes > fs-out", you'll get a complete trace of all of iTunes' file activity. This script will parse the output, keeping track of all the file opens closes, printing out the last 28 bytes of the filenames of any files that have read errors.

Yes, it would be helpful if iTunes' error message told you what file had an I/O error. Or even that it was an I/O error.

2004-05-17 01:39:00 | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Macintosh

iTunes Locked?

If iTunes exits in a particular unclean way, it may apparently leave you in a state where future startups will claim your "iTunes 4 Music Library file is locked". Neither Apple nor Google seem to have heard of this particular message before.

What appears to be the Right Way to recover from this: copy the 'iTunes 4 Music Library.xml' file out of Music/iTunes to somewhere safe; move or delete the 'iTunes 4 Music Library file'; start iTunes; import from the copied xml file.

Do not import from the xml file in place. If something goes even a little bit wrong (say, the fileserver where most of the files are currently isn't attached, leading it to think those files don't exist), it will still happily import he rest and create a new library file -- and a new xml file, erasing your old one.

If you find yourself in this situation, copying back the original library file, which used to be locked, may find happiness for you -- it did for me. Which seems to indicate the lockedness is an attribute of the file itself, not of any contents of the file. What kinds of file-system-level file locks survive reboots, though?

2004-05-03 05:03:00 | Comments (17) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Macintosh

Ambit Cable Modem web interface

Here mainly so I'll be able to find it next time I need it, but possibly of interest/use to others...

My Ambit cable modem (brand name not obvious from the unit itself; IDable only via ethernet OUI 00:02:8a) has a web-based interface well-hidden. It's at address http://192.168.100.1/, but is only accessible from http://192.168.100.20/. The login is 'root', password is 'root'.

If you have an Ambit cable modem, yours may act similarly! Or it may not. I'ts not like this is documented, supported behavior or anything.

2004-03-28 07:55:00 | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Hardware

While it can serve as a good replacement for Notepad...

Windows text editors whose marketing copy includes the phrase "While it can serve as a good replacement for Notepad":

• EditPlus -- "While i/t can serve as a good replacement for Notepad, it also offers many powerful features for Web page authors and programmers."
• Crimson Editor -- " While it can serve as a good replacement for Notepad, it also offers many powerful features for programming languages such as HTML, C/C++, Perl and Java."
• UltraEdit -- "While it can serve as a good replacement for Notepad, it also offers many powerful features for Web page authors and programmers."
• DevEdit -- "While it can serve as a good replacement for Notepad, it also offers many powerful features for Web page authors and programmers."
• WebDev Suite SC -- "While it can serve as a good replacement for NotePad, it also offers many powerful features for Web page authors and programmers."
• SynEdit -- "While it can serve as a good replacement for Notepad, it also offers many powerful features for Web page authors and programmers, and supports a good subset of the features found in other similar programs, like UltraEdit and EditPlus."

2004-03-22 01:09:00 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Software

Amazon Wishlist Priorities

Sometime this weekend, Amazon.com wishlists got a priority system; you can now mark items on a 5-rank scale from "Don't buy this for me" to "Must have", and wishlists can be sorted by priority.

This has been a long-desired feature and it's good to see it implemented, but I hope it'll be exposed through the webservices API soon; setting priorities on 17 pages worth of items with one form submit per item would be an exercise in frustration.

2004-02-23 03:07:00 | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Internet::Web::Sites

iTunes not-quite-Latin-1, Take 2

Besides the valid printable ISO-8859-1 characters that iTunes just munges, it also converts the high-bit-set control characters to others:

2003-12-03 21:32:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Macintosh

iTunes' not-quite-Latin-1

The ID3 v2.3 spec says

If nothing else is said a string is represented as ISO-8859-1 characters in the range $20 - $FF. Such strings are represented as , or if newlines are allowed, in the frame descriptions. All Unicode strings use 16-bit unicode 2.0 (ISO/IEC 10646-1:1993, UCS-2). Unicode strings must begin with the Unicode BOM ($FF FE or $FE FF) to identify the byte order.

Frames that allow different types of text encoding have a text encoding description byte directly after the frame size. If ISO-8859-1 is used this byte should be $00, if Unicode is used it should be $01. Strings dependent on encoding is represented as , or if newlines are allowed.

For tags that should be interpreted as ISO-8859-1, iTunes (v 4.1 (53)) actually uses a character set which is almost, but not quite, ISO-8859-1.

Even aside from the oddities of doing this at all, there are some other oddities.

There's less-than or equal to, but not greater-than or equal to; there's right single quote, but not left single quote. There's an actual letter for lower-case pi, but a mathematical symbol for upper-case pi (akin to using a multiplication sign instead of a lower-case x -- it more or less looks the same, but its' not).

I don't suppose anyone recognizes this encoding? It's not MacRoman, ISO-8859-15 or the old NeXT encoding.

2003-12-02 03:26:00 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Macintosh

On iTunes, Graphics, and Standards Documents

(Yes, yes, I should be asleep. What's your point?)

iTunes comes so very close in so many ways to being great, and falls short again and again. It's rather more frustrating than if it was just unusable, in which case I'd not use it and not worry about it further.

iTunes has a reputation for supporting ID3 tags pretty well. It is in fact the only implementation I have that claims to support ID3 v2.4.

I wanted to leverage the genre, style and tone information I already had from the All Music Guide to build some playlists for the iPod. A piece of cake, right? The genre part is pretty much free: put the genre name (completely ignoring the old silly numbered-code concept) in the TCON field (text: content), and iTunes & the iPod would make genre lists automatically.

ID3 v2.4 has added a "TMOO" (text: mood) tag which would work just fine for the 'style' information. Oops, but iTunes doesn't pay any attention to it. Ah, well, there's the TXXX fields, explicitely designed for user-defined text information. Nope, doesn't pay any attention to those, either.

Okay, then, comments. ID3 v2.3 supports multiple comment fields, so long as they have separate language and content descriptors. This is a fabulous way to allow users to keep semi-structured data attached to their files without walking on each others toes. Unfortunately, iTunes only supports one comment (the english-language comment named ""); or is it one per language, with comments appearing and disappearing as users with different language preferences log on? Well, that's a pain, but so long as I stick to a tag/value convention in my comment text, I'll be okay.

Oops, not quite. Although iTunes can read comments containing newlines just fine, there's no way to add newlines to comments in iTunes' comment editor. So, I can't add comments in iTunes -- a sacrifice I can live with, I suppose.

Oops, it still won't work. iTunes only reads the first 256 bytes of a comment field. Okay, shorten up my encoding format (instead of multiple nice lines like "Tone mellow", "Tone sensual", there's now one line like "T mellow|sensual"). Oops, some still too long; okay, throw away some random data.

Now, to script up some smart playlists. Oops, there's no scriptable way to make a smart playlist. Okay, script up some dumb playlists. God, I can't believe how much work this is turning into, but at least I'm learning AppleScript (ha!)

Okay, all that is done more or less satisfactorally. Or it will be, after I write another script to sort the playlists into the correct order, since iterating through a selection of tracks goes in almost-but-not-quite a linear order.

Now, on to cover art.

The APIC attached picture frame is similar to the comment frame in supporting multiples, but when iTunes creates the tag it's always type 0 'other' with no description, so we'll stick with that. (side note: type 17, "brightly colored fish"???). Update my auto-tagger, run it across my files, and...VOOOM, images!

Well, sometimes. "The Beatles", 1: yes; A Hard Day's Night (UK): no; Beatles for Sale: yes; Help! (UK): no; Let it Be: no; Past Masters: Volume 1: yes; Please Please Me: yes; Revolver: yes; Rubber Soul (UK): yes; With the Beatles: no; Yellow Submarine: no.

The ones that don't work, iTunes recognizes that there's an image, so it doesn't show the "Drop image here" logo. It doesn't show the image, though, just a white box. Clicking on it pops up a white window. Dragging it to the desktop, however, creates a clipboard file -- and double clicking that file opens up a window with the image. iTunes is clearly reading it and exporting it correctly, just not displaying it.

What's different between the ones that work and the ones that don't? Good bloody question.

2003-11-19 04:30:00 | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Macintosh

Rocket Mania Mania

As Robert discovered tonight, PopCap's Rocket Mania limits experiment seems to be over, and they're only serving up the limited variant of the web version now. He's done some work to un-limit it, though, for those of you who can't or won't play the Deluxe version.

In other news, I finally joined the ranks of the Master Sages last night with a score of about 1.895 million, in my last game before breaking down my Windows box for the movers to pack up -- I'll be Deluxe-less for the next 45 daysish, with the current moving plans. Ken reports breaking 2million, but still nobody I'm aware of has come even very close to the magic 3 million mark to become Brother of Dragons and verify that that's the last rank.

And, I finally got a 9× blast! As expected, that's 100,000 bonus points, plus lots and lots of coins. Alas, I spent too much time trying to pick up all the coins, and my game ended right after that.

(Not that I'm obsessed, either. Nope!)

2003-09-19 00:41:00 | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Games

Stealth Disco, Stealth Marketing

Stealth Disco is getting a fair amount of attention in various places.

Unsurprisingly, it appears to be stealth marketing, although I'm still not sure for whom.

StealthDisco.com is registered to

William L Hollister (CTLGDN-236318)
1323 N. Milwaukee #3
Chicago, IL 60622
US

Administrative Contact:
William L Hollister (236322) billhollister@yahoo.com
3126162594

Bill Hollister is a copywriter who joined Cramer-Krasselt's creative department in early 2003 after previous agency stints at Arnold Worldwide and Amster Yard. C-K is an "integrated marketing communications company" with offices in Chicago amongst other places.

Other people at C-K's Chicago office have phone numbers in the 312 616-2400 to 312 616-2600 range.

Stealth Disco is owned and controlled by a copyright at an Internet-facing marketing company from his desk at work. QED.

Update, minutes later: Okay, there's now a "who's behind this" link that basically says all that, but it wasn't there a few days when I first saw this and did the detective work.

2003-09-16 01:51:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Internet::Web::Sites

Rocket Mania Limits

RocketMania's online web version is limited to 10 levels, for some people, some of the time. That is, some people get the screen on right after they complete level 10.

Others of us, however, have no such problem. The game continues as long as we can hold out. So, why the difference?

It's not OS, at least not entirely: in the sample cases available, both Mac OS X machines are limited and both Linux machines are not, but one Windows XP machine is and the other isn't. It's also not browser, at least not entirely: both those XP machines are using IE/Win.

It turns out it's cookies. There are actually three variations of the Rocket Master applet page: nocookies, limited, and unlimited. Browsers that don't support cookies or have cookies turned off get the nocookie variation, which (besides name) seems to be identical to the limited variation.

Browsers that support cookies get either the limited or unlimited variation depending on the cookie; the only cookie in use is one like "RANDID=285259476"; it appears that even numbers get unlimited while odd numbers get limited. Since cookies are set by the server, it's not possible to determine exactly how they're selected, but presuming they're random like the name suggests, whether you get limited or unlimited gameplay is entirely random, selected when you first visit popcap.com.

I'm guessing they're doing an experiment to determine whether people are more likely to download and register the deluxe version of the game if the web version is limited, and we're the guiniea pigs. If you don't like being in the experimental group (or the control group, if the experiment's the other direction?), either edit your cookie or just remove the cookie and try again.

2003-09-08 16:25:00 | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Games

Rocket Mania Ranks

RocketMania ranks, and the minimum points required:

I'm not sure what to make of the last three -- the data all seems to be correct as far as I can verify (spot checked experimentally up through Mystifying Sage), but there seem to be three more rank names than items in the minimum point table.

And remember the warning!

2003-09-08 05:29:00 | Comments (48) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Games

Open Firmware passwords

From the "What in the world?" department:

Open Firmware: Password Not Recognized When It Contains the Letter 'U'.

Proposed 'solution':

Don't use a capital letter "U" when setting up an Open Firmware password. Change your password if necessary.

Surely it wouldn't kill Apple to explain how this happened.

2003-09-06 21:50:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Macintosh

RocketMania Redux

Apparently, when I said that RocketMania was "entirely too addictive", I wasn't making myself clear enough; several other people have succumbed to the mind-destroying virus and are choosing to blame me.

IF YOU VALUE YOUR MIND AND YOUR FREE TIME DO NOTNOT NOT PLAY THIS GAME AT ALL!!!!!111

There, is that clear?

2003-09-03 22:53:00 | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Games

RocketMania

RocketMania, PopCap's featured game at the moment, is entirely too addictive. It's the style of game I'm most susceptible to -- simple rules, easy to learn, but with emergent and somewhat non-obvious strategy.

There's a perfectly fine Java version, playable on any system with a reasonable Java VM, but the Win32 downloadable version is enough snappier that it's actually gotten me to sit in front of the Windows computer for several curse-free (well, mostly) hours this weekend.

I suspect this is Ken's way at getting back at me for hooking him on Buffy.

2003-09-02 05:31:00 | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Games

W32/SoBig.f@MM

Will all you Windows users please stop running whatever attachments people send you? Please?

SoBig is back and spreading like wildfire, and it doesn't even take advantage of any technical security holes, just people. People who will double-click on whatever attachments they get in mail.

Some infected AOL user visited my website at 4:10pm this afternoon. Since then, I've received 60 copies of this worm -- about one every four minutes. God only knows how many other people are getting even more copies of it, with no way of telling who's to blame.

2003-08-19 20:23:00 | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Security

Moving from IE to Firebird

If you're using browsing with Internet Explorer for Windows and you haven't tried it recently, it's time to give Mozilla Firebird a serious look. Firebird is faster, more standards compliant, more secure, and is designed with you in mind rather than large companies (ie: advertising blocking; popup blocking). Perhaps most importantly, Firebird is still getting better at an astonishing rate, while it's been years since the last IE update, and Microsoft has said there won't be another one, ever, without switching your OS to Longhorn when it's out in a few years.

If you've been reluctant because of how used you are to IE, then Jamie's guide to switching may be useful.

Help save the world; embrace the lizard.

2003-08-16 14:25:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Internet::Web::Browsers

Textile2 0+1i

The very first release of a textile 2 plugin for Blosxom is now available, based on Brad Choate's MT Textile 2 beta.

This is beta, or worse. It's been tested on all of half a dozen documents. The underlying engine it uses is also beta. You should expect both the plugin syntax and the markup syntax to change.

To use:

1. download mttextile-2_0b.zip from Brad Choate's page
2. download textile2-0-1i.zip
3. create lib and lib/Text directories in your plugin state directory², if you don't have them. install extlib/Text/Textile.pm from mttextile-2_0b in that directory
4. install textile2 from textile2-0-1i.zip in your plugin directory
5. look at textile2's configuration variables, consider changing them
6. install the meta plugin if you don't have it installed
7. rename plugins with numeric prefixes to ensure proper ordering, if necessary. meta needs to be before textile2, and is required. If you're using it, SmartyPants needs to be after textile2. Although it's not as important (or necessarily right), most other plugins that do text changes probably should be after textile2; that would include macros, wikiwordish, imagesizer (which isn't actually needed, in its stock form), and the like.³
8. create a test story with meta-markup: textile2 in its header
9. hope

The textile2 syntax is both more regular and more extensive than the textile 1 syntax, and is intended to be at least mostly backwards compatible. In at least one way that matters to me, it isn't, though¹, so this plugin is designed to be usable side-by-side with the earlier textile plugin. If you're willing & wanting to switch over entirely, configure the $handle_textile_1 variable to 1 and remove the textile plugin; then meta-markup: textile will invoke textile2.

¹ With textile 1, there doesn't have to be any space between the final '!' on an image link and following text; with textile 2, there does.

² That's your plugin directory, not your plugin state directory; thanks to Andy Fragen for the note.

³ This step added following Andy Fragen's difficulties -- thanks for being a guinea pig, Andy!

2003-07-27 09:14:00 | Comments (18) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Internet::Web::Blosxom::Plugins::Textile

Textile 2 test post #1

That should be a h1 (well, h4, with my configuration)

this is a blockquote

this ia a normal paragraph

1. this is
2. a numbered
3. list

• this is
• an unnumbered
• list

Up to there, that's all textile-1 syntax too

this is a code block

this is a paragraph with id "first"

1. Multi-level
2. lists
   1. are now
   2. supported
3. although
   1. it's not obvious
   2. how you would
4. format them
   1. if you didn't have one
   2. parent item between
      1. each
      2. sublist

This is code here.

This is a test link

this should go back to first

bq.* Can blockquotes
* contain lists
* now?

2003-07-27 09:03:00 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Internet::Web::Blosxom::Plugins::Textile

XEmacs Versions

• 20.3.8 "Copenhagen"
• 20.3.9 "Sofia"
• 20.3.10 "Athens"
• 20.3.11 "Stockholm"
• 20.3.12 "Helsinki"
• 20.3.13 "Brussels"
• 20.3.14 "Vienna"
• 20.3.15 "Berlin"
• 20.3.16 "Budapest"
• 20.3.17 "Bucharest"
• 20.3.18 "Bratislava"
• 20.3.19 "Kiev"
• 20.3.20 "Tirana"
• 20.3.21 "Bern"
• 20.3.22 "Minsk"
• 20.3.23 "Sarajevo"
• 20.3.24 "Ljubljana"
• 20.3.25 "Prague"
• 20.3.26 "Riga"
• 20.3.27 "Skopje"
• 20.3.28 "Reykjavik"
• 20.4.1 "Century"
• 20.4.2 "Alpine"
• 20.4.3 "Altai Mountain"
• 20.4.4 "American Cashmere"
• 20.4.5 "Anglo-Nubian"
• 20.4.6 "Angora"
• 20.4.7 "Appenzell"
• 20.4.8 "Arapawa Island"
• 20.4.9 "Australian Goat"
• 20.4.10 "Barbari"
• 20.4.11 "Beetal"
• 20.5.12 "Bhuj"
• 20.5.13 "Boer"
• 20.5.14 "Booted Goat"
• 20.5.15 "British Alpine"
• 20.5.16 "Caninde"
• 20.5.17 "Chapar"
• 20.5.18 "Daera Din Panah"
• 20.5.19 "Damani"
• 20.5.20 "Don"
• 20.5.21 "Golden Guernsey"
• 20.5.22 "Grison's Striped"
• 20.5.23 "Jining Grey"
• 20.5.24 "Kaghani"
• 20.5.25 "Kamori"
• 20.5.26 "Kiko"
• 20.5.27 "Kinder"
• 20.5.28 "LaMancha"
• 20.5.29 "Loashan"
• 20.5.30 "Moxoto"
• 21.0. "Benadir"
• 21.0. "Corsican"
• 21.0. "Danish Landrace"
• 21.0. "Erzgeberg"
• 21.0. "Finnish Landrace"
• 21.0. "Irish Goat"
• 21.0. "Norwegian"
• 21.0. "Poitou"
• 21.0. "Swedish Landrace"
• 21.0. "Thuringian"
• 21.0. "Toggenburg"
• 21.0. "Uzbek Black"
• 21.0. "Zhong Wei"
• 21.0.1 ""
• 21.0.31 "Myotonic"
• 21.0.32 "Nachi"
• 21.0.33 "Nigerian Dwarf"
• 21.0.34 "Oberhasli"
• 21.0.35 "Peacock Goat"
• 21.0.36 "Philippine"
• 21.0.37 "Pygmy"
• 21.0.38 "Repartida"
• 21.0.39 "Russian White"
• 21.0.40 "Saanen"
• 21.0.41 "San Clemente"
• 21.0.42 "Somali"
• 21.0.43 "Spanish"
• 21.0.58 "Poitou58"
• 21.0.59 "Poitou59"
• 21.0.60 "Poitou60"
• 21.0.61 "Poitou61"
• 21.0.62 "Pyrenean"
• 21.0.63 "Pyrenean63"
• 21.0.64 "20"
• 21.0.65 "20"
• 21.0.66 "20 minutes to Nikko"
• 21.0.67 "20 minutes to Nikko"
• 21.1.10 "Capitol Reef"
• 21.1.11 "Carlsbad Caverns"
• 21.1.12 "Channel Islands"
• 21.1.13 "Crater Lake"
• 21.1.14 "Cuyahoga Valley"
• 21.1.2 "20 Minutes to Nikko"
• 21.1.3 "Acadia"
• 21.1.4 "Arches"
• 21.1.5 "Badlands"
• 21.1.6 "Big Bend"
• 21.1.7 "Biscayne"
• 21.1.8 "Bryce Canyon"
• 21.1.9 "Canyonlands"
• 21.2.1 "Aeolus"
• 21.2.2 "Aether"
• 21.2.3 "Aglaia"
• 21.2.4 "Aglaophonos"
• 21.2.5 "Aphrodite"
• 21.2.6 "Apollo"
• 21.2.7 "Ares"
• 21.2.8 "Artemis"
• 21.2.9 "Athena"
• 21.2.10 "Boreas"
• 21.2.11 "Calliope"
• 21.2.12 "Clio"
• 21.2.13 "Demeter"
• 21.2.14 "Dionysos"
• 21.2.15 "Sakuragawa"
• 21.2.16 "Sumida"
• 21.2.17 "Chiyoda"
• 21.2.18 "Toshima"
• 21.2.19 "Shinjuku"
• 21.2.20 "Yoko"
• 21.2.21 "Euterpe"
• 21.2.22 "Mercedes"
• 21.2.23 "Hebe"
• 21.2.24 "Hecate"
• 21.2.25 "Hephaestus"
• 21.2.26 "Millenium"
• 21.2.27 "Hera"
• 21.2.28 "Hermes"
• 21.2.29 "Hestia"
• 21.2.30 "Hygeia"
• 21.2.31 "Iris"
• 21.2.32 "Kastor & Polydeukes"
• 21.2.33 "Melpomene"
• 21.2.34 "Molpe"
• 21.2.35 "Nike"
• 21.2.36 "Notus"
• 21.2.37 "Pan"
• 21.2.38 "Peisinoë"
• 21.2.39 "Millennium"
• 21.2.40 "Persephone"
• 21.2.41 "Polyhymnia"
• 21.2.42 "Poseidon"
• 21.2.43 "Terspichore"
• 21.2.44 "Thalia"
• 21.2.45 "Thelxepeia"
• 21.2.46 "Urania"
• 21.2.47 "Zephir"
• 21.4.0 "Solid Vapor"
• 21.4.1 "Copyleft"
• 21.4.2 "Developer-Friendly Unix APIs"
• 21.4.3 "Academic Rigor"
• 21.4.4 "Artificial Intelligence"
• 21.4.5 "Civil Service"
• 21.4.6 "Common Lisp"
• 21.4.7 "Economic Science"
• 21.4.8 "Honest Recruiter"
• 21.4.9 "Informed Management"
• 21.4.10 "Military Intelligence"
• 21.4.11 "Native Windows TTY Support"
• 21.4.12 "Portable Code"
• 21.4.13 "Rational FORTRAN"
• 21.5.0 "alfalfa"
• 21.5.1 "anise"
• 21.5.2 "artichoke"
• 21.5.3 "asparagus"
• 21.5.4 "bamboo"
• 21.5.5 "beets"
• 21.5.6 "bok choi"
• 21.5.7 "broccoflower"
• 21.5.8 "broccoli"
• 21.5.9 "brussels sprouts"
• 21.5.10 "burdock"
• 21.5.11 "cabbage"
• 21.5.12 "carrot"
• 21.5.13 "cauliflower"
• 21.5.14 "cassava"

2003-07-17 11:44:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Software

Garnome Versions

• Preview Six - "The Dutch Finger"
• GARNOME 0.10.5: "42 Days, 42 Nights"
• GARNOME 0.12.1: "Can't Dance In These Old Shoes"
• GARNOME 0.13.0: "Your Mum"
• GARNOME 0.14.0: "Shoes with Zippers"
• GARNOME 0.15.0: "The Little Furnace"
• GARNOME 0.16.0: "Hot Morning Furnace"
• GARNOME 0.17.0: "Next Big Thing"
• GARNOME 0.19.3: "Smack's up!"
• GARNOME 0.19.5: "Intergalactic War"
• GARNOME 0.20.0: "Back in the Pan"
• GARNOME 0.25.0: "Dude, when is the next GARNOME coming out?"

Additions, corrections, and annotations welcomed.

2003-07-17 10:22:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Software

Pan Versions updated

I've incorporated some corrections and updates into the Pan Versions list, thanks to Charles Kerr (okay, the link is a 404, but that's where his homepage would be, according to the Pan contact page).

2003-07-17 10:02:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Software

CGI.pm and posted XML

Sometime in the past two months, CGI.pm got a feature I'd been carping about (but not, mea culpa, doing anything about) for a while -- it no longer tries (and fails, miserably) to parse POSTed data that's not form-encoded; it now makes it available via a POSTDATA pseudo-parameter. Not that that's mentioned in the POD documentation, mind you, but it's there.

That means that, with just a one-line change, my old XML-RPC blosxom plugin Just Works without requiring any awful awful Blosxom hacks or Perl 5.8 (but it does, of course, still require a CGI.pm upgrade for most people). And my old half-finished Blogger API plugin seems to work as well as I remembered -- at least, byline is able to post to it.

Now, I try to sleep. Maybe I'll finish up Blogger1 and MetaWeblog tonight and take a stab at the (n)Echo-API draft.

If other people want to try other Blogger clients, that'd be just fine and dandy; the RPC URL is http://molelog2.molehill.org/blox/index.xmlrpc; username 'blogger', password 'password'. You can see the results at http://molelog2.molehill.org/blox/. The Blogger API calls 'newPost', 'editPost', 'getUsersBlogs', and 'getUserInfo' are at least partially implemented. 'getTemplate' and 'setTemplate' are implemented enough to return hopefully-correct error messages that they aren't implemented.

2003-07-15 08:32:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Programming

AOL Search's Encoded/encrypted Queries

For some reason, AOL has started encoding and/or encrypting the query strings in some of their URLs; I'm now seeing referers like "http://aolsearch.aol.com/aol/search?encquery=0523DA770DD87C92A11FA742545B0E51&invocationType=keyword".

The encquery argument is obviously hex-encoded; it's always a multiple of 16 characters/8 bytes long. Using that URL brings you to an AOL search form with the query string filled in, so it's obviously a two-way encoding, not a one-way hash like SHA or MD5. Playing with it some, it seems to be encoding in 8-byte blocks, each block independantly (ie, no cypher chaining or whatnot). Every 8-byte hex value seems to be valid, although most aren't meaningful.

My first thought is DES, but why? What possible value can this have, given that we can trivially use AOL's own servers to unencrypt any strings we're curious enough about?

perl -MLWP::Simple -ne 'chomp;' \
 -e '$content = get("http://aolsearch.aol.com/aol/search?encquery=$_");' \
 -e '$content =~ m:adSetSearch\(.(.*?).\):; ' \
 -e 'print "|$_|$1|\n";'

Observed crypt-blocks:

2003-07-15 07:35:00 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Internet::Search

Feedster Backlog and Blosxom

Feedster, a great RSS-based blog search engine, has a new Backlog feature; you create an RSS feed for the full history of your blog and tell Feedster about it, and it does a one-time load of the whole thing.

There are a few different possible ways for Blosxom bloggers to generate this feed.

The easiest way, for people who started their blogs this year, would to use the built-in date-filtering system; for example, http://molelog.molehill.org/blox/2003/index.rss is an rss feed of all my posts from 2003.

If you have pre-2003 entries, you'll have to be a little more clever. A minimal solution, which has some other possible uses, is to use a very small plugin like the following:

package numentries;
use CGI;
sub start {
  $blosxom::num_entries = CGI::param('numentries') 
    if defined CGI::param('numentries');
  1;
}
1;

then give Feedster an url like http://molelog.molehill.org/blox/index.rss?numentries=1000 (where '1000' is high enough to include all your entries).

I've done more or less that -- rather than create a whole plugin for that, I've just included that snippit in my catch-all plugins for small things like that, jtl.

Update: specified CGI::param rather than just param, as new versions of CGI.pm require.

2003-07-15 04:13:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Internet::Web::Blosxom

rRootage (IKA mode) Notes

rRootage's level 1 is a lot slower than it used to be, so I was able to play it quarter-brained some and experiment. Maybe all the following are in some mythical documentation set I just haven't seen, but even if so, who reads docs?

• The multiplier in the upper left corner ranges from 10 to 1000 based on how long you've had the Big Boss under continuous fire; the higher the multiplier, the more damage your firing does.
• The counter in the upper right corner is a timer. The end-of-round bonus is based on this, but I'm still not sure the exact formula -- it doesn't seem to be linear, and I haven't got enough samples written down to test others (I need paper and pencil?! isn't this the 21st century?)
• If the timer gets to 130,000, the round is over even if you haven't damaged the Big Boss at all.

Combine all those, and you have a rather different strategy than what I had been using. Namely, your priorities become:

1. survive
2. stay under the big boss
3. do interesting things with big clumps of bullets

Using that strategy, I was finally able to finish 5c, and 5d (or 5r?) was pretty easy. The 'survive' bit is pretty tough still on 6a.

2003-07-13 15:29:00 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Games

Telephone Directory Directory

Infobel has a useful worldwide directory of telephone directories.

2003-07-09 22:12:00 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Internet::Search

David Baron on User Stylesheets

One of the huge mostly untapped promises of CSS is user stylesheets -- the ability of users to control the presentation as much as website owners/designers do. Almost all the modern browsers I use support them (I don't think Camino provides an interface, yet), but none except Opera ship with interesting example.

David Baron wrote up some useful notes on how they should be written nearly 4 years ago; although CSS has come a long way since then, these are stll the best notes I know of on this subject.

Have I just been missing something? Can someone point me at a great repository of useful and interesting user stylesheets to play with?

2003-07-09 22:10:00 | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Internet::Web::Design::CSS

Mount Rainier

Whenever the subject of optical disc storage standards comes up, I wrack my brain trying to remember the name of the latest in the High Sierra / Rock Ridge naming tradition.

It's Mount Rainier, and their goal is to make CD-RW and DVD+RW discs as convenient and natural to use as floppies are (or were, back when people had floppy drives).

2003-07-09 21:49:00 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Storage

IE/Win div Scrolling Bug

notestips explains an IE/win bug that can lead to missing or garbled text. They propose a workaround, which I'm now using here.

IE users, please let me know how this works for you, whether it fixes the missing text problems or not.

2003-07-06 18:45:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Internet::Web::Browsers::IE

1941 and rRootage

Ken "Тату Kissing" Williams discusses shooters like 1941 and pointing to a new game called rRootage, recently ported to the Mac.

Once upon a time, there was a Nintendo multi-game game (what's that really called, Ken?) Playchoice-10 with 1941 1942 installed. I think hitting the 999990 score limit on it might have been the most important thing I accomplished at that job that month.

rRootage looks to be terribly terribly addictive. You shouldn't download it.

Update: Thanks for the corrections, Ken.

2003-07-03 19:58:00 | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Games

Cyveillance gets the kids.us monitoring contract