Tech

Tech-focused ramblings. Computers, blogs, and whatever else fits.

That’s more like it

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Okay — finally figured out the tricks to the css code I was working on, so now the site looks like I was aiming for way back when when I started this whole redesign thing. It’s a fairly minor change from what it’s been for a few months, but I like this a bit better. It’s about time I got it figured out…managed to do it without screwing things up this time. :)

Two more projects coming up — the first is going to be changing the .cgi I use to post news to Moveable Type, as it’s got a fair amount of features that my current .cgi (NewsPro) doesn’t have, or if it does, they’re not quite as smoothly integrated. Secondly, finally going through the rest of the site and actually getting all the pages using a consistent look — something that I just haven’t gotten done yet. Ah, well.

But for now — time to head out, get some food, do some shopping, and other fun things along those lines.

Hasta la bye-bye.

Site fixed, new addy, and LOTR

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Okies — first off, I was able to restore this main page from a recent backup, so the page is back to normal again.

Secondly — www.djwudi.com is active! Yay! I’ll go ahead and leave the old djwudi.dyndns.org addy active for a while, but the preferred address for my site is now www.djwudi.com. Woohoo!

Lastly — just got back not too long ago from Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. In a word — incredible. I’m not sure I can get much more than that out yet, a more detailed review will have to wait, but…. Well, I enjoy fantasy movies, and they’re a lot of fun, but this is the first time I can remember that a fantasy film was that good and true to the spirit of the genre, completely sweeping you up in its world and carrying you along the entire time. Just wonderful.

And it’s going to be a long year until the next part….

Argh…

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Well, I was experimenting a bit with the layout of the site, and managed to more or less hose things fairly well. So…things don’t look quite right at the moment. I’ll try to get them straightened out as soon as I can, but not sure when that’ll be — tomorrow night is Lord of the Rings, so I’ll be home late. Grrrr….

Privacy, shmivacy

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Wheee…more fun news from our dear friends in the FBI: “Magic Lantern”, a government developed ‘trojan horse’ style virus that appears as an e-mail attachment. Once on your machine, it can record keystrokes (in other words, anything typed on the keyboard — letters, e-mail, passwords, credit card numbers, etc.) and transmit them back to the FBI for analasys. As if that wasn’t bad enough, antivirus software makers are considering intentionally not scanning for this particular virus — in essence, selling crippled versions of their software. More info can be found at Wired and The Register. Just thought this deserved some mention.

XP sucks!

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XP sucks!I got sent this image (click for a larger version) tonight. According to the site it was posted at, this is a truely genius piece of work — someone actually managed to scale up to wherever the sign is and alter it. In other words, this isn’t just some joker with Photoshop at work — this is a real-world hack job. Just wonderful…goes to show that there still are some truly cool people in the world.

What’s with the black bars?

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While most of my friends have been around me long enough to understand my preference for watching films in widescreen or letterboxed format, occasionally I get questions about the ‘black bars’ at the top and bottom of the screen. While I think I usually do a pretty decent job of explaining why they’re there, one of the members of the Home Theater Forum put together a really nice Shockwave Flash animation demonstrating what’s going on. If anyone’s got any questions about widescreen presentations, this link should help get the idea across:

Original Aspect Ratio, or, Why Widescreen?

Why is this not a surprise?

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Looks like everyone’s (least) favorite monopoly is up to its usual bag of tricks combined with lackluster security again.

As if it’s not bad enough that Windows XP prompts (or maybe browbeats would be a more accurate description) you to sign up for their Passport system at every chance it gets (according to a C|Net article, a USA Today article, a C|Net review, and a bunch more articles and reviews scattered across the ‘net), but they’re now starting to require you to sign up for a passport before you can register hardware (as reported today at MacInTouch, prompting a mac user who’d purchased a Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer to forego registering it). Then, if that wasn’t enough — they screw up the security (big surprise, eh?), creating a situation that could have been exploited to steal Passport users’ financial information, according to this Wired story.

Meanwhile, analysts looking at the “deal” worked out between the Government and Microsoft in the antitrust case pretty much agree that it “…is not even a wrist slap. It’s a love letter…” and that “…Microsoft will emerge…stronger, emboldened, and perhaps more agressive than it was before.”

Good thing I’m naturally cynical, otherwise I’d be surprised at all this. Instead, I’m just disgusted and resigned.

And people wonder why I continue to stick with Apple!

Quotes: OS X, iPod

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The computing world needs an OS X ad blitz that would show people that Apple is alive and well in the OS business (and advertising would finally convince white people to relax around me, since they would then know that my wearing a T-shirt with a blue X on it doesn’t mean that I’m a Louis Farrakhan follower paying homage to Malcolm X, but, instead, I am a computer geek showing my OS partisanship).

— Rodney O. Lain, in his ‘iBrotha‘ column for MacObserver

The iPod certainly got a lot of attention when I showed it to people, including a Windows guy named Bill Gates. He spun the wheel, checked out the menus on the display screen and seemed to get it immediately. “It looks like a great product,” he said. And then he added, incredulous, “It’s only for Macintosh?”

— Steven Levy in Newsweek, commenting on Apple‘s new iPod mp3 player