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Wednesday, August 29, 2001Red Code, Blue Code@ 10 pm | PermaLinkSo I'm sitting at my machine at work, and software begins crashing left and right. I've got 6 or so windows open and by time I have to reboot entirely they're all fozen and the machine won't respond at all. I start the arduous reboot process when my phone rings. "Hello, is this Ross?" "Yes..." "Did you just loose your network connectivity?" "I think so. My apps started crashing and I just now rebooted." "Okay. This is Greg from DTS. We shut down your port. We'll be coming upstairs to your machine." "Can I ask why you why you shut down my network connection?" "Well... We think you've got the Code Red virus." The internal networks here had gotten hit, twice with the Code Red virus. Once on the outside machines, and the second time on the inside. The whole IT department is pretty skittish these days about this stuff. But there's just one problem. The Code Red virus attacks the Index Server component of Microsoft's IIS web server, running on WinNT. Item the first: I'm not running the Index Server. Item the second: I'm not running IIS or any other web server. Item the third: I'm not even running WinNT, my laptop has Win98! Apparently some piece of software somewhere had decided that it found a Code Red packet coming from my machine and started setting off bells and alarms in ...Houston! (AKA location of the parent company) Houston told the Portland people to shut me down quicker than you can say ASAP. They did, and the techs came up to my cube. One said, "Huh. That's weird." That last line, by the way, is a direct quote. They said, if they could figure out what was going on, they'd let me know. Otherwise they'd just turn the port back on. Gave me a good reason to take a lunch break.
Sunday, August 26, 2001Electric Drags@ 02 am | PermaLinkI attended the Woodburn Electric Drags on Saturday. I got a lot of pictures and a *lot* of sun. I wrote everything up in an article that's got lot of pictures. I stole Amy's Cannon digital camera and took it with me. I'm glad I did, because it made this write up a lot more interesting. Of course an event that's all about the silence of an electric motor that is moving over a period of time would be far more interesting with a digital video camera... Hmmmm.
Thursday, August 23, 2001Science You Can Use@ 11 pm | PermaLinkFrom Private Eye's (http://www.private-eye.co.uk/) current Funny Old World column ... "It all started with an enquiry from a nurse," Dr Karl Kruszelnicki told listeners to his science phone-in show on the Triple J radio station in Brisbane. "She wanted to know whether she was contaminating the operating theatre she worked in by quietly farting in the sterile environment during operations, and I realised that I didn't know. But I was determined to find out." Dr Kruszelnicki then described the method by which he had established whether human flatus was germ-laden, or merely malodorous. "I contacted Luke Tennent, a microbiologist in Canberra, and together we devised an experiment. He asked a colleague to break wind directly onto two Petri dishes from a distance of five centimetres, first fully clothed, then with his trousers down. Then he observed what happened. Overnight, the second Petri dish sprouted visible lumps of two types of bacteria that are usually only found in the gut and on the skin. But the flatus which had passed through clothing caused no bacteria to sprout, which suggests that clothing acts as a filter. "Our deduction is that the enteric zone in the second Petri dish was caused by the flatus itself, and the splatter ring around that was caused by the sheer velocity of the fart, which blew skin bacteria from the cheeks and blasted it onto the dish. It seems, therefore, that flatus can cause infection if the emitter is naked, but not if he or she is clothed. But the results of the experiment should not be considered alarming, because neither type of bacterium is harmful. In fact, they're similar to the 'friendly' bacteria found in yoghurt. "Our final conclusion? Don't fart naked near food. Alright, it's not rocket science. But then again, maybe it is?" (Canberra Times, 17/7/01. Spotter: Michael Doyle) Previously, that same day...Collecting Dev Processes@ 11 am | PermaLinkI've decided that I'm going to start collecting Development Process outlines. I certainly have my own, and have seen others. I think it would be great to have a collection of them to look at. Here's the first one, which I'll call FP Delivery: Requirements Deliverables
Implementation Deliverables
Delivery
I'll add more later as I come across them. Once I have three or four, I'll start a Gallery over at my WebDev Articles section.
Wednesday, August 22, 2001A Trojan At Work@ 09 am | PermaLinkYesterday I helped a co-worker remove a Trojan Horse from his Win98 machine. It seems that an MP3 encoder program that he had installed also brought along a friend or three that started adding advertisments to his web browser and his machine in general. It was scary stuff. His machine needed to be cleaned up anyway, but there were a ton of things that he said was software he wasn't using, so we Uninstalled a bunch of packages. One of them was SaveNow, which sounds like a utility I would use to save the work I'm doing in Word or something. But it turns out that it's a Trojan horse and causes most of the unauthorized activity that was going on. Sometimes it's nice to be in the minority where it's not as cost effective to build stuff like that. ObWinComplaint: Does HomeSite really have to be *this* unstable?
Tuesday, August 21, 2001Macro Redux@ 11 pm | PermaLinkI hadn't actually taken a look at the Macromedia Daze site. (Skip the intro.) You'd think that if I was going to give a presentation that I would have put a little more effort into looking at the materials of the conference. It's kinda fun to see my name up along side people who *actually* know what they're doing. Feels like I'm sneaking in and riding the coat tails. And I was the only one who decided to write a tongue-in-cheek bio. Oops. However, I'm still working on an article regarding the topic I talked on. If anyone would like to help me, what I really need is for someone with a high-speed line to go through http://www.adcritic.com and find one or two examples of commercials that look like they were done in Flash. Had I a T1 at home, I might try this myself, but I seem to be missing a giant utility closet and a bank account to pay for it...
Monday, August 20, 2001Photoshop Tennis@ 11 pm | PermaLinkAfter seeing the results of the Coudal.com Photoshop Tennis matches, Amy had the great idea for us to play each other. I've served up the first image: a 640x480 canvas with a round gradient purple to black, and a layer of green fuzzy rectangles with drop shadows over it. We'll see how she returns the hand. :)
Saturday, August 18, 2001Fight Club, The Prequel@ 11 pm | PermaLinkWow, what an article. Now I actually want to see Fight Club. Previously, that same day...Funny Ad@ 10 am | PermaLinkI had this ad forwarded to me. It goes to show just how far the tech sector has fallen. Previously, that same day...Twice linked, once read@ 09 am | PermaLinkIt seems that in order to put a filter on what I read on the web I will only start reading articles that are linked to by at least two different web sites. Now all we have to do is build a script that polls various web logs and then read only the articles that have reached a certain level of linked-ness. Anyone up for the challenge?
Friday, August 17, 2001Jef Raskin under Interrogation@ 06 pm | PermaLinkIn this column, Widget of the Week #9, What I'm hearing is not Noun/verb vs Verb/Noun, but more something like this: Let the user Choose the Goal, then choose the Path. A) Let Me Tell You (the program/computer/website) what I want to accomplish, then B) You'll Ask me the questions that will get me there. The interface designer's first goal is to make sure that the first question "What Do You Want To Do?" is asked in such a way that it frames the answer into something the program can work with. This is what I have found. Previously, that same day...Jabber Invades@ 02 pm | PermaLinkIt's happened. The whole office has started playing with Jabber today. I pointed it out to a couple other people here and now it's a full fledged event. I'm thinking that I'm going to try to get the IS Dept to switch over to it. Right now they all seem to be gravitating towards ICQ. I have that installed, but it's got the worst interface I've ever seen for a modern GUI program. Now I've got both installed and they seem to play together pretty well. If anyone is interested in my Jabber ID, e-mail me and I'll send it.
Tuesday, August 14, 2001Multimedia Internet Dev Group@ 10 pm | PermaLinkWednesday night I'll be 'facilitating' the Open Discussion forum at the Multimedia | Internet Developers Group. We've got a great panel of people lined up for discussion along with some seeding topics. It'll be a great round-up of design, development and out loud thinking. Imagine a mailing list, without the spam, and no 'vacation' bounce backs! Now imagine it in person. It'll be great! Tomorrow night at the PCC Traing Center, down by OMSI. See you there!
Sunday, August 12, 2001Code Red Notes@ 10 pm | PermaLinkThe sheer number of hits on ordersomewherechaos.com that are from the Code Red Virus are pretty amazing. 195 in just 4 days. This is for a server that has only been active for a couple of weeks mind you. But that's not so interesting. The much more interesting part is that 193 of those came from 64.*.*.*. Now I'm on a mission to see what the Class A 64 range is for. (Lookups courtesy of ARIN) 64.1 - 64.3: Concentric Networks (Don't they do DSL?) We got 20 Covad addys, and 10 or so PAC-BELLs, more Telocity, Some Bell Canada's and two hits from RIPE addy's: i.e. hits from Europe. Overwhelmingly I'm seeing CODE RED hits from DSL provider networks... It's no wonder that Verizon and other DSL providers have been getting so nasty about shutting down ports and such. I've decided to add this to my .sig: 'For the CODE will pass through to smite the WindowsNT Admins; and when he seeth the LACK OF Xs or Ns upon the QUERY STRING, and on the two side posts, the CODE will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to come in unto your SERVERS to smite you.' - EXODUS.NET 12:23 Previously, that same day...Wiki Spam???@ 10 pm | PermaLinkOh-ma-gahd! My old Wiki just got spammed! This is the most bizarre thing. It looks like some bot came in and posted this message on it's own. When will spam be considered punishable by removal of the hands? Soon I hope.
Saturday, August 11, 2001Discussion Board is stable@ 11 am | PermaLinkWell, I'm finally ready to declare the Discussion Board stable. The Wiki has stayed in place and has been quite usable for the past week. Feel free to jump in and add your own comments to mine. I will be adding additional notes for each journal entry into Wiki. Previously, that same day...Pre-War Russia... In Color!@ 11 am | PermaLinkWow, take a look at this exhibit of Russian photographs from 1915. Yes, Color photographs from 1915. They are truly amazing. In particular, these stand out: Three Generations, Factory Interior Showing Turbines, The Emir of Bukhara. Wow! This is the sort of thing that really inspires me to travel and go places like this. Of course this is 90 years ago and the other side of the world. Only one of those would be difficult to overcome.
Friday, August 10, 2001Today's Gig@ 08 am | PermaLinkI'll be giving an hour talk with Brad Smith at the Macromedia Daze event today at 1:00pm. Should be good. It's on Flash and Television. I've got some good notes on the Flash Aesthetic that I'll be going over, along with some examples. I'll get some notes and post them to my WebDev section sometime soon. Later this month I'll be MC'ing the discussion at the Multimedia|Internet Developer's Group. Should be a really good one! I had been wanting to put a discussion group like this together for a while.
Tuesday, August 7, 2001WebVisions Today@ 08 am | PermaLinkToday's going to be a busy day, as I'm helping out at WebVisions today. This is something that I would have wanted to be involved with even if I wasn't working for the company that organized the whole thing. Plus I'll probably be having drinks with Zeldman, so... neener-neener! Oh and I just finally finished _Don't Make Me Think_. Highly recommended for web designers of all shades.
Monday, August 6, 2001How to get linked@ 11 pm | PermaLinkAll you need to do do is write something about GreyMatter. My tutorial on how to add an RSS feed to GreyMatter has been my most popular article in the last couple of months. Now that I've got FPO actually moved to a new domain, I've got access to some much better stats. In just the week I've been over there the spike for the Greymatter/RSS article is evident and the number of referrals has been very Weblog oriented. Previously, that same day...Radio Free Steve@ 01 am | PermaLinkI missed the Portland premier, but others can catch it, I'm sure: http://www.radiofreesteve.com. Enjoy!
Thursday, August 2, 2001Averted Disaster@ 09 pm | PermaLinkThat was a close one. I thought I was going to have to migrate anything that I used a script from the bad-seed.org server, but it turns out that I won't. I can leave Dwelling and AbsVW.org both here, though I will move a lot of my stuff off of this server, I just won't have to do it on an incredibly accelerated schedule. Right now I can just focus on migrating all of the pieces of smartnetworks.net/~rosso over to http://www.ordersomewherechaos.com and leave well enough alone. Today I put together a prototype for a new site that we're rebuilding. It's pretty cool getting a chance to do some quick and dirty build out. It's been such a long time since I've actually built something for my day job. All I've been doing till now is fighting other people's fires and wars. Now the fun can begin.
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August 2001
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