Monday 29 September 2008 at 8:43 pm
MTV has posted their spot on steampunk to their website - you can watch it
here.
There is also a written article by MTV
here and some of the photographs they took are
up here.
Sunday 28 September 2008 at 7:44 pm
I haven't been posting a whole lot lately since Lyssa and I got back from Pittsburgh two weekends ago; we'd gone home to finalize the wedding plans that remained, such as getting hold of the marriage license, agreeing on the floral arrangements, and whatnot. Unfortunately, this involved a lot of driving, totalling out in the neighborhood of twelve hours behind the wheel, a bit more if you factor in actually driving to and from Pennsylvania itself.
The first thing we ran into was the wedding license. To save ourselves some time and energy we decided to go to the Greene County courthouse, which is only a hop, a skip, and a jump away from where Lyssa's parents live (and where we were staying, coincidentally). Due to the fact that a Pennsylvania marriage license is good no matter where you are in Pennsylvania, we figured that we'd pop in, get ourselves a
self-uniting marriage license, and get back on the road.
Simple, right?
More under the cut...
Saturday 27 September 2008 at 12:11 am
And now, a series of photographs taken at the Greene County courthouse in Pennsylvania while Lyssa and I were fighting to get a
self-uniting marriage license. Please read the posted notices carefully.
More under the cut...
Friday 26 September 2008 at 11:59 pm
Friday 26 September 2008 at 11:56 pm
While en route to Saloncon a few weeks ago, we came across
a vending machine which can accept payment via RFID-enabled credit cards. I think we found it at a rest stop not too far away from the northern border of Maryland.
Thursday 25 September 2008 at 1:51 pm
A basic maxim of information security is that when someone has physical access to a machine, all bets are off. If someone can touch a box, they can do pretty much whatever they want to it: if the console is unlocked they can poke around at whatever the access privileges of the logged in account will allow (how many of you configure your screensavers to require a password to turn off? how many of you walk away without logging out?), and possibly copy data to a removable storage device, such as a USB key. An intruder can also power the machine off by pressing the power button or disconnecting the power or battery (in the case of a laptop) and steal any removable media attached to the machine for later analysis. More likely, if an intruder is going to go to the trouble of killing the power, they may as well steal the hard drive(s) while they're at it to analyze elsewhere. Such measures are un-subtle, however, and will be detected rapidly if the system is in use (as it would be in a corporate data center).
More under the cut...
Wednesday 24 September 2008 at 9:49 pm
I've finally put the photographs from
Saloncon online - you can view them
here.
As always, if there are any corrections, or if you'd like to tell me who you are so I can caption pictures correctly, please leave a comment.
Monday 22 September 2008 at 8:37 pm
The trip that Lyssa and I took to Pittsburgh this weekend to finalize wedding preparations has all but wiped me out. Between all the driving, not sleeping a whole lot lately, and possibly getting some bad Chinese food while in the old neighborhood, I'm clinging to life and consciousness with the nails of all twenty digits. I'll post when I can walk around without weaving as if I'm drunk and when my stomach and I are on speaking terms once again.
Tuesday 16 September 2008 at 9:25 pm
I didn't get a whole lot of sleep last Thursday night due to getting ready for
Saloncon 2008 and general problems getting a decent amount of rest these days. I think that part of it's the unusually high pollen count in the DC area right now and part of it's the air conditioning filter in the apartment (which Lyssa is having fixed today due to the fact that we can't get into the locked room in which the air conditioner is installed). Also, wedding stress is starting to mount with the end more than an month away. At any rate, Lyssa, Laurelinde, and I got a late start on Friday due to running errands and last minute packing. Lyssa and I caught lunch at On the Border because my blood sugar had crashed while Laurelinde drove home to get some things that she hadn't brought over the night before. We caught our first taste of bad traffic a scant mile away from the apartment complex due to construction near route 650 in Virginia.
I saw 'near' because The Powers That Be are tearing down the old buildings on either side of route 650 to build... something. We're not yet sure what that something is, but the going hypothesis is that it'll be another gym/stores/parking garage/apartments megaplex like the other two that are just picking up steam in Fairfax these days.
Once we loaded everything into the back of Laurelinde's new car, I cocooned myself in the back seat with a stack of books, my TomTom GPS navigation system, and Windbringer to while away the long trip from DC to Somerset, New Jersey and Saloncon 2008. Somewhen along the way, probably in Maryland, we got soundly stuck in traffic due to highway construction and inclement weather, as is wont to happen within a one hundred mile radius of the nation's capital. The impractical upshot of all this was that we didn't arive at the hotel until 1930 EST5EDT. By the time we arrived all we could think of was getting out of the car to stretch and getting dinner. Laurelinde was in the same place I was not six hours before (running on empty, blood sugar-wise) so we sent Lyssa to check us in while I grabbed an unattended luggage cart, unloaded the car in record time, and hauled the whole mess upstairs to our room. Total time: not five minutes. We met up with Hasufin and Mika in the lobby, piled into their car, and headed down the street to the local Italian restaurant/pizza joint for dinner.
More under the cut...
Sunday 14 September 2008 at 11:42 pm
Lyssa, Laurelinde, and I returned from
Saloncon about four hours ago. We're dead tired.
I'm going to bed.
What a weekend. What an adventure.
What a success.
Thursday 11 September 2008 at 8:31 pm
Sorry for another late post, everyone - between work, wedding stuff, and trying to keep from falling ill, I've had a lot on my plate lately.
On Tuesday night, after coming home and having dinner, I ran a couple of last-minute errands for Lyssa and then set course once again for Washington, DC proper for the weekly
HacDC administrative meeting. While I'm technically not a member because I haven't started paying dues yet, I've been doing a lot of hands-on electronics work at the site, more specifically my steampunk sonic screwdriver. Most of what I've been doing lately has been repairing or lengthening wires (because they were never intended to see any motion outside of their intended housing) so that I can re-package the circuitry inside of a piece of brass pipe. As I wrote last time, I was having a lot of trouble getting the momentary button to stand up in the tube so that it could be bolted down.
As it turned out, the button was just too big to fit reasonably. I looked at taking it apart, compressing the button so that it could pivot as required, pulling on it with a piece of string and a piece of wire by turns, using a set of files to widen the hole (which actually helped), and using a few pairs of hemostats to wiggle things. What I wound up doing was using the toggle switch I'd bought as a backup, which fits perfectly when you take the mounting hardware off. Once that was worked out I went back to lengthening and repairing the connect wires, specifically those of the (original) power button and LED power leads.. between the crappy wire I was using (heavier gauge than the hookup wire I'd used previously in an attempt to save what's left of my sanity) I kept running into solder joints breaking, and more often the wires themselves crystallizing and snapping like dry twigs.
After the fourth or fifth such occurrance, I packed it in for the night.
More under the cut...
Thursday 11 September 2008 at 12:05 am
While we didn't get hit by Hurricane Hannah, the DC metroplex certainly felt her wrath late Friday and all day Saturday. I don't want to say that it was raining cats and dogs but not long after waking up on Saturday morning I saw a squadron of squirrels wearing what appeared to be miniature SWAT gear high-tailing it through rain blowing at a forty-five degree angle toward a nondescript white van in the parking lot. Unfortunately, they've moved back in and are busily digging in the coffee and aloe vera plants on the balcony, Lyssa tells me.
I've had a little too much coffee today, does it show?
But seriously, monsoon season has come to DC and we felt it all day Saturday. Visibility was markedly reduced, the wind tore over the land and scattered what it could, and you could have gone bodysurfing in the field behind my apartment complex. Later in the day it took nearly an hour to drive to the local
Microcenter outlet, normally a ten minute drive under good conditions. It wasn't humid, it wasn't cold, it was just wet. Windy and wet, which made it a fine day to stay indoors as much as possible taking care of the laundry list of stuff that needs to get done but somehow never is. You know what I'm talking about; run the sweeper or read another chapter; go through the catalogs on the kitchen table or watch a DVD.
More under the cut...
Monday 08 September 2008 at 11:20 pm
During the last presidential election, numerous
dirty tricks were played in the weeks and months prior to votes being cast by anyone, such as
absentee balllots not making it into the mail,
voters being forced to wait so long that they couldn't cast their votes (because they had families to take care of or work to attend to), and
unusual investigations were carried out that scared away potential voters.
Many voters were wrongfully turned away at the polls in some areas. If what happened at
Virginia Tech not too long ago is any indication, the political black ops are just beginning.
If you went to college in the past decade or so, chances are you were given the opportunity to register to vote in case you hadn't already during orientation or in the first week or two of classes. Last month, much the same thing happened at Virginia Tech, with one crucial difference:
the local registrar of elections released a pair of fraudulent press releases which predicted serious consequences for registering. Among the wholly fictitious downfalls to registering to vote in the United States were that students doing so would lose their financial aid, that they could lose scholarships or health insurance, or even that they could no longer be claimed as dependents on their parents' tax returns, which would result in taxes due going up under the guise of changing legal residence without notifying the proper authorities. In fact, it was reported by the Montgomery County registrar that an unknown number of students
cancelled their voting registrations out of fear due to this.
For the record, none of these things are possible. This is nothing but a scare tactic. If you live on campus you
can receive mail there, but you do not need to legally change your place of residence unless you move there on a year-round basis (i.e., you've moved out of the house and gotten your own doss someplace). If you're not registered to vote, it isn't hard to do so. If you read my weblog you're
a Google search away from the information.
Voting is your way of making your voice heard in the running of the United States. Don't be silent.
Saturday 06 September 2008 at 9:58 pm
I've been trying to figure out how to write this post. I've tried the poetic way, the emotional way, and a few other tactics that just don't seem to work, so I'm going to go with the honest way:
An old friend of mine,
Dee Mikula, is shipping out soon. She isn't in the military, but works as an EMT in Seattle and is registered with the
Red Cross as a first responder in disaster situations. In 2004, she worked in central Florida during hurricane season, and on Tuesday, the ninth of September she's
flying down to the Gulf to assist during the aftermath of Hurricane Gustav. Unfortunately, this means that she's taking three weeks of unpaid leave from her job which more or less leaves her without a source of income while in the field.
Ordinarily, I don't ask for stuff like this, but she's in a jam. She's asking for donations so that she can keep her rent and utilities paid while on duty, and to that end there's a Paypal account linked off of her homepage for donations.
I've known Dee for over a decade now, ever since I lived in Pittsburgh, so I'll vouch for her. She's trying to do some good in the world and she could use some help in doing so. If you can spare some money right now, please send it to her.
Dependent upon her connection to the global Net, she might be incommunicado while in the field. I'll post updates as I can (and as she gives permission, of course).
Thursday 04 September 2008 at 7:36 pm
It's been said that the killer app that made the Net as ubiquitous as it is today is the web browser, with e-mail running a close second. Just about everyone uses a browser in some capacity or another to access news, information, and e-mail, possibly moreso than dedicated applications (such as e-mail readers, RSS readers, or database searching applications). As great as they are, web browsers have their own unique sets of problems and vulnerabilities that have to be taken into account, especially if privacy is of concern to you.
Firefox, in my considered opinion, is an excellent web browser - its memory footprint is small, it's lightweight, it's easy to install, it's available on a number of platforms, and it's also extremely extensible, in the form of
Add-ons that add or modify features of the web browser. Also, the Mozilla Project itself has been fairly diligent in fixing reported vulnerabilities in their work;
Microsoft hasn't, unfortunately, though they are getting better at it. Microsoft also tends to have a too-little-too-late approach to their browser upgrades. While IE7 now includes tabs and IE8 will have some privacy features, Firefox and
Opera had them several years ago, and more's the point they've had time to get them working properly. As you might expect of an open and extensible platform, coders from all over have implemented security and privacy related add-ons, of which I've spent a couple of years testing, destroying, and hammering on out of enlightened self-interest. These are the ones that I recommend to everyone because they're the first things I install in a new copy of Firefox.
More under the cut...
