July 2004 Archives
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July 31, 2004
Upgraded to MT 3.0
Well, it may not look like much, but the blog is now running MT 3.0. This means everyone will have to register with TypeKey to be able to comment. This has become an absolutely required move in the last week where over a hundred spam comments got through the filter based system and hundreds more were blocked by it.
Now, the bad news. I can't seem to login and comment. I'll be working on that so hopefully comments will be up and working again soon. Of course, I don't get a whole lot of comments so I'm not too concerned about this. However, I need to get it working as it's _supposed_ to work.
July 27, 2004
spam Spam SPAM!
Alright, so I've gotten at least 50 spam comments that broke the filter in the last 24 hours. To stupid spammers: This site is not popular. Spamming here won't make you money. Good bye.
And to everyone else that reads this (that's me!) I'm probably going to upgrade to 3.0 pretty soon and require a TypeKey login. What I don't know is how smooth the upgrade process is as 3.0 is still in the developer edition stage.
I feel like ordering a Costco sized helping of spam on our next work order... as a joke, of course, but the stuff is cheap enough.
Hrmm... someone stop me.
The problem with computers...
Alright, you know I haven't posted enough when I'm posting about things like this. But one line particularly caught my attention:
"The number one cause of computer problems is computer solutions."
And that line is at the crux of the entire problem of computers.
July 22, 2004
Spam Blog
Lately, I've been getting more spam to this blog than I'm posting myself. Although I have a spam blocker, quite a bit gets through and the spam is getting quite a bit more ingenius.
Last week, I had a comment post that had what definitely looked like a personal blog page. What gave it away was that the URL was also being used on a couple of other comments. I checked at the spam site I use and sure enough others had reported it and it had made the filter. I guess they planned on leaving it as a regular site for a while and then switching it over to some ad page with a gazillion popups.
Also goofy was one yesterday that I went to, just to verify it wasn't realy. This one fired off about 4 popups. I have the Google toolbar blocking such things, so I'm a bit confused as to what happened. Because I didn't have IE running before I clicked, I think what happened was the page and scripts came up faster than the toolbar did. That was quite irritating.
Anyway, if the problem continues to get much worse I may have to turn off comments completely until I have a chance to upgrade to MT 3.0. I'm looking forward to doing the upgrade. However, I'm not looking forward to the time it will take, even if it's fairly quick.
July 14, 2004
Diamon Encrusted V600
I understand modding phones and making them unique. I even understand making them fashionable or adding a jewel or two for status. But this is just silly... that's nearly 10 carats of diamonds!
eBay item 5709200425 (Ends Jul-19-04 11:45:00 PDT) - Motorola V600 DIAMOND ENCRUSTED PHONE NEW
July 12, 2004
It's ten minutes past ten, where is your clock?
This clock is just too unique to let go... so I'm link to Gizmodo's article on it.
I have to wonder though: is it as easy to read as someone saying the phrase is easy to understand? I mean, someone who says "8:47" probably isn't as understandable as "It's about a quarter 'til nine".
Hmm... they just might be on to something big...
or not.
Samsung 3MP CameraPhone
Alright, I'm a gadget freak, so I think this is cool because it keeps innovation moving, etc, etc.
However, I think this is the first phone I've seen that isn't a phone at all. I mean, sure, PDA phones hardly looked like phones for a long time. But this one really does look like it's _meant_ to be a camera first. Give it a detachable lense and twice the MP and you can make some fine prints from it that are rather large. Heck, as is (if you keep the optics clean) it'll make decent snap shots to pass around.
But would you want to talk on it? It shoulda come with a keyboard so you could type on it. :p
July 6, 2004
Curitel S4: A 2 MP cameraphone
And it even has optical zoom! We've just barely begun to see 1 megapixel phones here in the US. As much as it's frustrating, it's also nice to see the future by merely looking across the Pacific (the dateline here often moving one forward by a year or two). Curitel often sells under the Audiovox brand in the US (as does Toshiba). This is quite an improvement over the CDM8900! ;)
Sharp is at it again!
This is an absolutely brilliant looking display and book reader. If, like Gizmodo says, it could take our own documents (like, say, a PDF?) I'd be all over it. It looks both very useful and very futuristic. What could be better?
Now, how do you sell your old ebooks on ebay? The used book market seems roaring these days. We've been selling a ton of books very successfully on ebay and for far more than the standard 25 cents that a used paperback used to go for. Of course, new paperbacks didn't used to be $8.50, either, but it's still amazing. But seriously, if you buy used books and then sell them you can almost stay even and if you buy new you can recover half the cost much of the time. How can this be done with ebooks? What about the library? Are ebooks only for those that can (and want) to spend the money? While these questions remain, the paper form will live on (there might be a couple of other reasons, too).
I need these around work...
... if only so that I'm not the only one without something bluetooth. Oh, and to clean up at least one wire around the desk. But wait! The charger isn't wireless yet. Doh.
I wonder how many greenbacks they'll try to lighten your wallet by?
Bluetake BT420 Bluetooth Stereo Headphones
July 2, 2004
A new Phone
Seeing as how it's been so long since I've gotten a new phone, I got one last night: the LG VX7000. Well, technically I didn't get it: Laurie did. See, she'll need it for her company but I get to use it for a while until the Motorola V710 comes out. Lucky me! ;)
It's a rather nice phone, with a slick screen (no 9900/9950 though), a decent camera (at least as good as the Samsung A670, which means it's a huge improvement over the LG VX6000), real video support, and a streamlined new UI that makes getting and accessing built-in apps and downloaded apps nearly seamless. It's marginally bigger than the LG VX6000 which, in turn, is marginally bigger than the Samsung A670. It should be smaller than the Motorola V710.
The Verizon MMSC has this obnoxious habit of transcoding nice JPEGs (wallpaper size) at around the 60-70k byte range into ones of exactly the same size, but down to 7-8k bytes, thus losing a bunch of quality. However, it works fine using PNGs to get the fully quality. These can then be saved as wallpapers for both the front screen and the main screen.
Ahh, new toys... gotta get back to it...
