Strangely interesting article I found today, about crowds holding up cards to form large pictures. The largest was performed in Portugal in 1999, where the stadium crowd at the National Stadium in Lisbon formed an image of a player kicking a football. The aricle also goes into some detail about the use and principle of pixel-people for various ways and means. [Via Urbanscreens, photo from 4to40.com]
Lightning Tracker
I’ve written about this before, but interesting little bits like this deserve some attention. Today I had the live storm tracker loaded up, watching some impressive thunderstorms track across eastern England from somewhere near Hull to Norfolk. They’ve all died down this evening, but maybe there’ll be some more tomorrow.
I actually had the PNG representation up – it doesn’t refresh automatically but takes less resources and is almost as informative at a glance.
Link Catchup
Right, I haven’t posted anything particularly interesting lately, so here’s a bit of a catch-up:
- Google Spreadsheets is released, albeit to a limited group – looks like an interesting AJAX app. Bit on the thin side by the looks of things, but then how many people use Excel for anything more complicated than accounts or modelling?
- Portsmouth is set to become the first city in the UK to implement a city-wide 20mph speed limit.
- Windows Vista Beta 2 is now generally available – although it looks like their servers are swamped!
- The Tories could be offering spaces to bloggers at their annual conferences (nothing new – see also 2004 US Elections, but still something to keep track of)
- For those of you that are interested, the Blogtalk conference this year is Oct 2-3 at Vienna in Austria. I went a couple of years ago – it was a great conference and the city is gorgeous! Still in two minds about this year though.
- In other news I have just returned from a canal holiday. Photos soon!
Layout Snags
Thanks to the awkwardness of a previous post, my layout went a bit weird. So, for the time being I’ve switch to a template that uses the entire screen. It might be boring, but it works!
Google Adwords Video
Google currently support Flash and image ads (as well as the usual text ads) – now they’re adding Video ads to their options. It’s an interesting addition – doesn’t seem overly intrusive (as long as they don’t play automatically, which they currently don’t).
Why I Might Not Reply
Spam sucks. It really does. It affects your blog, your forums, your phone, your Skype account, and your email.
I am using quite aggressive spam filters at the moment (see above; 1476 spam emails today and it’s only 10:50 am). SpamPal is great – it’s unintrusive, uses a variety of methods to capture spam (Thunderbird‘s Bayesian just isn’t enough), and is easy to customise.
Spam filtering, of course, isn’t an exact science and some legitimate emails may well have been caught. If you have sent me an email – particularly if we haven’t spoken before or I’ve forgotten to add you to my whitelist – please try again. I do check the Junk folder but occasionally miss things.
Google Translate
Google have always had a reasonably decent translation tool squirreled away on their website, and most recently they have added translations from English to Chinese Simplified, Arabic, Japanese and Korean.
The closest thing I get to a reliability metric is to paste a block of text in English, translate it, translate it back, and compare the generated text to the original. The first block of text I grabbed was from Skype’s website:
Skype Zones BETA is a little piece of software powered by Boingo that gives you access to Skype through thousands of Skype-friendly hot spots, while you’re on the move. So now when you’re at your favourite café or waiting quietly at the airport, you don’t have to count the tic-tac of your watch, instead you can just talk to your friends on Skype.
Translated to Chinese Simplified:
SkypeBETA区是一å°ç‰‡çš„动力Boingo软件,使您获得通过SkypeSkypeæ•°åƒå‹å–„çš„çƒç‚¹,åŒæ—¶è¿›ä¹”è¿. 现在没事åšåœ¨é™é™ç‰å¾…ä½ å–œçˆ±çš„é¤åŽ…或机场,ä½ å¿…é¡»è¦æœ‰ç®—议会-äº¤é€šå’¨è¯¢å§”å‘˜ä¼šä½ çœ‹,ä½ åˆšæ‰ä¸æ˜¯è·Ÿä½ 的朋å‹å°±Skype.
And back again:
SkypeBETA district is a small piece of motivation Boingo software to enable you passed SkypeSkype thousands of friendly hot and chin on the move. With nothing better to do now at the airport waiting for your favorite restaurant or, you must have a Parliament-the Transport Advisory Committee you can see, you just do not like your friends on Skype.
Interesting outcome – definitely not a reliable measure, but it’s interesting to see where the meanings are being mangled.
Hack Attempt
Just noticed an attempt to find unprotected admin/phpMyAdmin interfaces on one of our servers. The script appears to try common URLs (below) for PMA, presumably in the hope that the admin has left it wide open. As ever, keep those doors locked and secured!
/phpmyadmin/main.php
/PMA/main.php
/mysql/main.php
/admin/main.php
/db/main.php
/dbadmin/main.php
/web/phpMyAdmin/main.php
/admin/pma/main.php
/admin/phpmyadmin/main.php
/admin/mysql/main.php
/phpmyadmin2/main.php
/mysqladmin/main.php
/mysql-admin/main.php
/main.php
/phpMyAdmin-2.5.6/main.php
/phpMyAdmin-2.5.4/main.php
/phpMyAdmin-2.5.1/main.php
/phpMyAdmin-2.2.3/main.php
/phpMyAdmin-2.2.6/main.php
/myadmin/main.php
/phpMyAdmin-2.6.0/main.php
/phpMyAdmin-2.6.0-pl1/main.php
/phpMyAdmin-2.6.3-pl1/main.php
/phpMyAdmin-2.6.3/main.php
/phpMyAdmin-2.6.3-rc1/main.php
/phpMyAdmin-2.6.2-rc1/main.php
Hello April
The following things are true:
- It’s been a crazy couple of months
- I miss blogging, even if only five or six people seem to read it.
- I don’t miss the number of spam emails and comments I receive daily, hourly.
- I have turned off comments, but that’s not to mean you shouldn’t email me
- I wish they would hurry up and release Series 7 of West Wing on DVD
- Yes, I have reset the template. It wasn’t working. You weren’t tripping.
Normal service will resume very shortly.
Movie Updates
I haven’t done a movie review for a while. There’s a good reason for that – the last movie I saw was somewhen in October, and I frankly can’t bring myself to sit in those cramped movie theatres with overpriced popcorn and people who find the movie an annoying interruption to their phone conversation.
So, I buy DVDs. Quite a few of them recently. If I had a list of the DVDs I watch most frequently, these would be in it (but not necessarily in order):
Garden State – Zach Braff is the guy you might know as J.D. from Scrubs. In this movie Braff not only stars alongside Natalie Portman, he is also the writer and director. It’s a damn good film too. Lighthearded enough to make you laugh, whilst having a serious and emotional storyline. The soundtrack is a fantastic complement, and I thoroughly enjoyed this.
Amélie – I can’t help but love this movie. A great performance all round, with a twisting, fascinating storyline. The movie stars Audrey Tautou as Amélie: a sheltered, fascinating girl who decides to help others find happiness and love by carefully setting up liaisons and events. It’s a great film, and the latter Jean Pierre Jeunet film, A Very Long Engagement also starring Tautou is also well worth a watch.
Das Boot – Only got round to watching this the other night. The director’s cut is three hours and twenty minutes long, and the film spans two DVDs. Very interesting film following the crew of a U-Boat during operations in World War Two.
Being John Malkovich – Try describing the storyline of this film to somebody and they won’t believe you. I’ll try anyway: Puppeteer works on 7 1/2 floor of a building, in which he finds doorway into John Malkovich’s head. Let’s him see through Malkovich’s eyes for a few minutes, before being dumped out by the side of the New Jersey Turnpike. Weird movie, but fun.
Dogville – This was recommended by a friend. Her words were ‘it’s all done on a stage with all the houses drawn out on the floor’. I had no idea what to expect from this Lars Von Trier movie starring Nicole Kidman, but I was pleasantly suprised. It’s a great arty movie.
When I do go to the cinema, I’m itchin’ to see Munich, Final Destination 3, Just Friends and I might watch Brokeback Mountain to see what all the fuss is about.