Wednesday, December 31, 2003
Now I'm sure there's something supposed to be happening tonight, but I don't remember what.Oh well.
Cool fireworks out there though.
Steve 11:03 PM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, December 27, 2003
Take one creatively inclined person, a digital camera, a copy of photoshop and give them a plasma ball lamp for christmas (thanks Dawn :-) )... and see what happens.....
The ball's getting a lot of coverage on my webcam at the moment, coz it's just too cool not to.
Labels: photos
Steve 4:18 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, December 25, 2003
Jules Holland is without a doubt a complete tosser, so it's very rare that I sit and watch his music show 'Later' on tv.Last night however I was flicking through the channels and paused on his usually irritating show just to see what the next band was like. Ooooooooooooooooooooh Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!
Or rather... Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
Talk about blown away. There's nothing new about the music Yeah Yeah Yeahs are making, but you have to go back to 1976-78 to find it. It's loud, it's raw, it's fun and it's shockingly sexy for something so aggressive. And that girl singing... I'm in love. Okay.. lust... but y'know. Gimme.
Oh yeah, merry christmas or something.
Labels: music
Steve 2:13 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, December 22, 2003
Ooooohhh!Nasty, nasty, devious virus writers.
Not only do they send shitty little programs to screw up your computer, but they send it attached to emails designed to scare the crap out of unsavvy users.
Check this out... I just recieved it...
"Ladies and Gentlemen,
Downloading of Movies, MP3s and Software is illegal and punishable by law.
We hereby inform you that your computer was scanned under the IP 195.120.34.59 .
The
contents of your computer were confiscated as an evidence, and you will be
indicated.
You get the charge in writing, in the next days.
In the Reference code: #12417, are all files, that we found on your computer.
The sender address of this mail was masked, to protect us against mail bombs.
- You get more detailed information by the Federal Bureau of Investigation -FBI-
- Department for "Illegal Internet Downloads", Room 7350
- 935 Pennsylvania Avenue
- Washington, DC 20535, USA
- (202) 324-3000"
Now with all the crap going around from the RIAA and now the European Union passing laws that will allow the same kinda thing here, some poor people are gonna fall for this.
The giveaways?
Most obvious was a virus attached to it.
The lousy english.
The fact that it refers to the FBI, but comes from an address in germany.
Biggest giveaway of all, and the reason I knew right from the getgo that this was bullshit... that's not and never has been my IP address.
What a bunch of jerks.
Labels: computers
Steve 12:43 PM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, December 21, 2003
It's been a week of ups and downs, for sure.All I can say now is I'll be very glad when Christmas and the new year are done with and out of the way. This year at least, they're nothing more than a hinderance to getting my life back on track and a reminder of how messed up things can become.
It's not all bad though... it can be pleasantly surprising, the people who appear out of no-where to help in a tight spot.
Steve 3:11 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, December 18, 2003
Oh this sucks.The money I've been getting from advertising on my websites has dried up totally. There's nothing coming in at all now, like... absolutely zero.
So... I sold my soul, so to speak, and went along to a recruitment agency, coz the bills have to be paid. Only with my recent work record (or lack of it), the woman isn't even sure if they'll take me.
Now I'm sat here waiting to hear from them after they get my references.
That's just great... sell my soul and the devil doesn't want me. Crap!
I have to be honest, I'm more than a little nervous.
Steve 5:48 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
It's no secret that I lean rather to the geeky side of computer usage... emulation being one of my passions.So I just completed installing the MESS emulator... this thing runs software for just about every computer and console made from 1975 onwards (and one designed in 1956) up to the Sega Megadrive (Genesis) with a bit of a stab at the Nintendo SNES too.
That's not where the *real* fun started though.
Ohhhhhh No!
I have one word for you... actually, it's two... I think.
NeoGeo. Neo Geo? Umm.
Whatever.
Now, there's a lot of crap in this system, despite amazing hardware for it's time, and not being into beat-em-ups, I amost gave it up. Then I discovered the Metal Slug series.
Excuse the expletive, but Oh My Fucking God!
These games are ***NUTS*** and so are the people who're hosting the roms. Metal Slug 3 weighs in at around 75 Megabytes!!!
I laughed my head off when I saw the size of it. Then I laughed again when it actually downloaded. The I laughed again when it wasn't corrupted. (Obviously this wasn't done at home on my own machine... I was at a friend's house, or something *cough*)
Then I played it. Words fail me.
It's (all 4 of them) a sideways scrolling shootemup with the most awesomely detailed (2D) graphics you've ever seen, and the number of sprites on screen at any one time defies belief. Level designs are of a quality you just wouldn't believe.... and the humour... I could show you screen grabs, but they wouldn't remotely do it justice. If you'll excuse the cliche, these games are vastly more than the sum of their parts and if you have just one ounce of gaming passion in your body, you really should look them up.
Steve 8:20 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, December 15, 2003
Not a real post today, as there's not a whole lot to talk about... but a photo.This is one of the things I love about where I live... one of the best views across town, anywhere in town... especially at sunrise.
Labels: photos
Steve 8:39 AM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, December 14, 2003
It's been a very busy week, only not doing any of the usual things.... except in that it was net related.I've been fighting something of a battle in the #england undernet chatroom, only what sets this apart from your typical chatroom fights is that it wasn't against any person or people.
The chatroom, and undernet as a whole has been plagued for the last year or two with spambots, and no-one has been able (or maybe just haven't tried) to stop them.
The thing with these spamming bots that a lot of people don't understand is that they aren't people. They're a hidden program sitting on some unsuspecting person's computer, put there secretly by the very website that the program advertises in the chatroom.
So... the more people who click on the adverts produced by the bots, the more people become infected with the program and start advertising... making a very vicious circle. Where this falls down is, it's a parasitic system. Once the number of bots reaches a certain level, people will no longer tolerate that level of intrusion, and will stop visiting the chatroom(s), which means a loss of income for the owners of the websites being advertised by the bots.
Now where do I fit into all of this?
A large part of why no-one's tried to stop the bots is that they're very hard to spot as they enter the channel. They look like normal chatters, and don't do anything to draw attention to themselves.... and they absolutely NEVER spam ops who can kick them out of the room. So, till recently we've never been able to kick them out till after they've spammed someone and been reported for it.
Until now.
It was pointed out to me a few days ago that if I did a "whois" (technical irc term for looking up certain info about chatters) on all of the people joining the room with a gibberish ident in their hostname, a large proportion of them would have a 5 digit number for a 'real name'. 99% of those are spambots, and its easy to verify that by doing a 'version' check on them... as the bots never respond to this check. A final check, just to be absolutely sure is to message them privately. The bots absolutely never respond.
Armed with this information, I began kicking bots from the chatroom on sight.... though this turned out to be a bigger task than I had realised.
Every time I kicked a bot... usually two or three actually, as they always come in clusters, more would join the room.
Obviously, doing this manually for an extended people just wasn't gonna work, as it was leaving me no time at all for actually chatting, which is what chatrooms are actually there for.
What I began doing was logging all the details of every single bot I spotted. After a couple of days I went over that data looking for trends, set maybe 20 strategic bans in the channel bot, and set up a massive blacklist script on my irc client.
Now any bot trying to enter the channel either gets banned by the channel bot, or kicked by my script. The *very* few that slip through get spotted by me (when I'm watching), kicked out manually and added to the blacklist so they can't come back.
All that remains to be done is to tidy up the list to remove any duplicate entries and distribute it to all the ops who want it... and hey presto... game over... we won :-)
Labels: chatrooms
Steve 6:55 AM [+] (0) comments
Monday, December 08, 2003
I'm hooked on a piece of music.An aussie girl in the chatroom I frequent messaged me pretty much out of the blue and told me I had to download this tune... some band I'd never heard of before. I dunno if they ever get played in the uk, but they're entirely new to me.
So anyway, My Happiness by Powderfinger... I just can't stop playing it. It's the first piece of music I've heard in a long time that consistantly makes me smile every time I hear it... and after the past couple of weeks, it feels really good to smile again.
Nice one Waitress^^, you might be a pushy little wench, but you have great taste in music ;-)
Labels: music
Steve 10:57 AM [+] (0) comments
Some time ago I posted about how one of my web pages had dropped in rank on google, and how I believed this was due to changes I'd made on my site.
Well, a little research has shown that this drop in rank has nothing to do with anything I did, as many other people are having similar issues.
It turns out that google have adjusted their algorithm, so that many small but good and relevant sites have been dropped down the rankings. Effectively small commercial sites that were relying on google (and the host of other search engines that use google such as yahoo and aol) to bring them traffic and customers are now completely screwed unless they pay for a good position.
More than this, all the people who have come to rely on google for reliable and accurate search results have also been royally screwed, as they'll now be faced with either a long list of irrelevant rubbish, or a load of paying commercial sites.
I personally believe Google have abused their position as the recognised best search engine. They have broken our trust and royally shafted everyone for the sake of making a buck.
Labels: annoyed
Steve 1:33 AM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, December 06, 2003
One of the things that's been troubling me is the loss of artistic motivation and inspiration.Musically, I haven't produced anything for over a year and a half, partly due to a frustration with my equipment. While I've been able to create the bare basics of a tune, since my Amiga died, I've been unable to add overdubs, vocal samples and all the little sounds and effects needed to complete a tune. Even when that machine was working, it was seriously limiting, both in terms of flexibility and audio quality.
So... something has changed. I've got a copy of Steinberg Cubase SX 2 and what an absolute revelation it is. Truly liberating.
The problem I have now is a minor technical detail, and not too expensive... though it does demonstrate the poor state of my finances.
The only audio input on my laptop is a mono mic socket... completely useless for recording complex pre-sequenced music tracks. Now while I can work around this for a time while teaching myself the software, it's highly inconvenient, and the only solution is to buy an external usb soundcard. Not an expensive piece of equipment by any means, but a demonstration of the state of my finances, as I'm going to have to go and do some agency work to afford one... and I will buy one.
For the first time in ages my creative ambition is fired up... I fully intend to create a masterpiece of an album, one as good as I imagine my tunes to sound in my head before I hit the limitations of my equipment... and this time I intend to push it to the record companies.
Labels: music
Steve 9:55 PM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, December 02, 2003
Why no blog posts?Disillusionment, mostly.
There's plenty I'm pretty fed up with, but since I don't wish to write one of those "my life sucks" blogs, I've chosen not to write anything at all.
So, unless anything worth writing about happens, consider this blog on hiatus.
Labels: blogging
Steve 12:26 AM [+] (0) comments
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