Dan Q
Just came across the Infinite Cat Project. The premise is simple: take a picture of your cat looking at the
current picture on the web site, and send it in, and it will become the current picture. The first cat is Frankie: just
click Next Cat to get to the next one.
I think this is a great use of the high-speed communication that the internet gives us in order to produce something truly artistic. Cool.
Woo and indeed hoo! I’m really starting to enjoy programming RSS feeds into my web sites now. I’ve just done a little bit of recoding of the Troma Night website to allow the newly-relaunched Aberystwyth weblog aggregator, Abnib, to syndicate it. Now, Abnib will show the details of the next upcoming Troma Night… and not a moment too soon – if you’re viewing this post on Abnib, you’ll see the announcement of tonight’s Troma Night just below it. Yay!
(much thanks due to Gareth)
Abnib, the Aberystwyth Weblog Aggregator (bringing you niblets of the best of Aber’s weblogs) is back online, after months of absence. Take a look and see who you recognise.
Haven’t quite gotten around to putting everybody’s ‘mugshots’ in there (as I’m having some difficulty with semitransparent PNGs), but Gareth’s made a good few to get us going. Yay! Hooray for Gareth! And Aberystwyth! And Abnib! And RSS!
There’s an article on how Google could overthrow AIM/ICQ (link removed; apple-x.net now seems to be occupied by domain squatters), and perhaps even MSN Messenger, from their dominant positions in the instant messenger market, and improve internet standards usage and accessibility, by releasing their own instant messenger tool powered by the (wonderful) Jabber protocol. It’s a lovely idea, but (sadly) not one which is likely to happen.
On similarly geeky news, there’s a new web site, BrowseHappy, which aims to help everyday users make the switch away from Internet Explorer to safer, simpler, faster, better browsers. If you’re still using IE, take a look. If you’re already enlightened, show it to your unenlightened friends. It’s a very approachable site in nice, easy language.
And finally, there’s apparently a new worm doing the rounds, “Peeping Tom”, which, upon infection, turns on the victim’s webcam and microphone, and begins broadcasting to the world. What a lovely idea for a novelty virus.
Thanks for listening
There’s a new googlebomb out, abusing the way that the popular Google search engine works. To see it in action, go to Google and enter “Bush’s foreign friends” (including the speechmarks) as the search term, and hit the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button.
If you’re looking for a way to keep up-do-date with the latest Scatmania happenings, it’s now really really easy. I’ve enhanced my weblog with a heap of useful syndication tools that make keeping track of my latest activities a doddle, even for those of you who are unenlightened and can still be caught using an awful choice of web browser.
You may have noticed that at the bottom of the Scatmania menu there’s a series of button. Most of these buttons (the top five) relate to subscribing to Scatmania, like this:
| RSS |
RSS is a popular format for syndicating news and views on the internet,
supported by most weblog communities and applications, as well as by many news sites. To view RSS content, you will need an
RSS Aggregator such as Pluck (a plug-in for Internet Explorer), RSSOwl (for most operating systems) or the attractive NewsMac
for MacOS. The Opera web browser now supports RSS feeds, too, and it looks likely that other browsers will soon follow suit.
RSS is a great way to keep up with your friends weblogs and your favourite news sites. |
| Atom | ATOM, like RSS, is a simple way to keep up-to-date with your favourite sites. Just download an ATOM-enabled newsreader (some, like BottomFeeder, can read RSS feeds as well) and point it at the sites you want to watch. Scatmania publishes an ATOM feed of the latest blog entries. |
| ESF | ESF is a small, fast, and simple new way to publish content like weblogs. There aren’t really any programs for reading it right now. Why not consider writing one (see how simple the data format is). |
| CDF | CDF, developed my Microsoft as part of Internet Explorer 4, was supposed to be the future of the way we used the web and subscribed to the services of web sites… but it never took off. However, Internet Explorer to this day provides the means to subscribe to ‘active channels’, and for Internet Explorer users, this may be the easiest way to keep up with Scatmanian events. Just click the button in Internet Explorer and Scatmania will be added to your Favourites list as a submenu, automatically adding new items (and removing old ones) as new entries are added to the blog. Thanks to Aquarionics for suggesting this reincarnation of Internet Explorer ‘active channels’. |
So, now you’ve got no excuse for not being up-to-date with my blog… or anybody elses!
The other buttons are mostly just me showing off because I can write standards-compliant code – click on them and see for yourself.
Claire’s at work this Saturday morning, so I’m taking advantage of the oppertunity to finish the web site I’m developing for my dad – almost got a deployable version ready, which is nice, because I could do with getting his feedback on it and (assuming all’s well with design and whatnot) deploying it “live” on Monday morning. Which is all good, because I need the money!
The folks who now own the cafe below us – our new landlords – have made great strides in getting it ready for use. It’s now got tables, and chairs, and a chiller unit, and some stock, and a coffee maker, and all kinds of stuff. It’s been entirely repainted and refloored and redecorated. It’s pretty much ‘there’. They’ve even put up the new sign. The new sign advertises the cafe’s web site, mgees.com. I’ve taken a look… and… it would appear that they tried to make a web page in Microsoft Word (bad start), then ran the source code through a copy of Dadadodo to ensure that it was completely mangled, before they uploaded it. Jeez. Still, they’ve asked me to quote them for a new one, so once I’m done with this site for my dad I’ll see what I can do for them.
Speaking of Dadadodo, Claire‘s been playing with it recently. You should see what happens when you put the book of Genesis through it… oh; we laughed.
Back to the code…
I see that Slate, a magazine run by MSN (and owned entirely by Microsoft), recently published an article promoting the idea of not using Internet Explorer. Whoopsie, say Microsoft. Better yet, the article suggests using Mozilla Firefox, their main competitor in the browser market, instead.
Promised you something cheery. There it is.
Welcome to Scatmania, Version 2!
After my disasterous data loss the other day, I decided to take the oppertunity to redesign Scatmania into something altogether better-suited to the purpose (i.e. doesn’t use a silly flat-file system). And here it is (well; unless you’re reading this through LiveJournal).
I’ll be graduating this afternoon, which will mostly involve standing around in silly robes while a man talks bollocks in Welsh. After this, I’ll be going out for a meal with my folks, who’ll be visiting for the occassion.
On an unrelated note, does anybody want to join Claire, Bryn, Paul and I on a trip to Alton Towers, some weekday during September (taking advantage of the cheap rates and lack of schoolchildren that’s available at that time of year)? Date to be confirmed, but if you want in, drop us a message or leave a comment.
In related news, I hear that some folks have been arrested on suspicion of being behind the Half-Life 2 code thefts. Maybe Valve were waiting for the arrest to be made so they could get their code back. =o)
http://www.plannedchildhood.org/
Umm – what is with these guys? Are they anti-abortion, or anti-TV-violence, or anti-technology, or anti-drugs, or anti-pornography, anti-sex-ed, or what?
And the title: “Unborn babies poisoned by rocket launches” [sic]???
Still, this painting is pretty good.
[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]
[further content was recovered on 13 October 2018]
If you’ve been on the internet for any length of time at all, you’ll probably have come across the concept of a phishing [wikipedia] attack, or even been the target of one. The idea is that Joe Naughty sends you an e-mail, pretending to be your bank, credit card company, or whatever, and when you click the link in the e-mail it takes you to your bank’s web site. Or that’s what you think, anyway. Actually, you’re at Joe Naughty’s web site, and it just looks like your bank’s web site. And so he tries to trick you into giving him your bank details, so he can rob you blind.
I was recently the target of such an attack (one related to the CitiBank browser-bar scam [bbc news]). In this particular attack, the fake site tries to trick you into thinking it is the real site by making your Internet Explorer address bar ‘disappear’, and then replaces it with a picture of an Internet Explorer browser bar saying that you’re on the real site.
I decided that this was a particularly crude hack, and that I could do better. And …
Terribly geeky I know, but I find it awfully exciting: PHP 5 Release Candidate 1 was released today. PHP 5 can now be considered feature-complete, and mostly stable. If only the program I’m writing with it could be considered the same…
[this post was damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has not been possible to recover it]
[further fragments of this post were recovered on 12 October 2018]
If you’ve been reading this blog since September-ish, you’ll remember when I had about a week of ranting about the VeriSign/SiteFinder lark: this was where VeriSign, who (in layman’s terms) are responsible for linking all .com, .net, and .org addresses to their respective servers, in September last year put a ‘catch-all’ clause in. In other words, every possible combination of letters and numbers, followed by a .com, .net, or .org, ‘belonged’ to them. This was a complete abuse of their position of power, and caused a great deal of faults amongst systems throughout the internet. In addition, it could eventually have been used (and evidence suggests that the intention was there) to monopolise the internet’s search engine and advertising services.
Well; they’re at it again, as this article (“SiteFinder vs. Engineers: Our Mistake Is Ignorance”) discusses, so you’re likely to see me ranting at least a little more. If they do decide to do it again, they’ve stated that they will “provide 60 or 90 days warning, in order for the appropriate technological …
Got a spare quarter hour? I think you should go and read WorldOfEnds.com. It’s a fascinating and concise analysis of what is the nature of internet, and why why should stop making mistakes with it.
It’s not geeky – it’s philosophical.