Blog posts from 2008
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Ubik, the fortune file
The text ads on facebook and google make me think of ubik , and with the power of greasemonkey, it’s possible to actually make them all for ubiq - so many use proper nouns that it should be a simple…
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Simplepedia
I integrated two existing greasemonkey user scripts for wikipedia, and added lots of element { display: none; } ‘s to the style sheet, and ended up with a userscript I’m calling Simplepedia :…
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Plato on the written word
I’ve been reading McLuhan a lot lately trying to figure out what effects media shifts have on culture. As parts of the modern world walk away from picturesque media, turning to this new dynamic…
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How I almost got myself killed
I almost got myself killed once and have never written how. I was just grabbing a soda from the machine here at work. It’s a slow afternoon the day before Thanksgiving, and I was thinking to myself…
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Body Language
In my class tonight, the professor lectured about communications. When she got to the bit about body language and oh if you cross your arms like so, it is communicating that you are closed off, one…
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Outlook Zen Koans
Outlook error messages must be Zen Kōans . There simply isn’t a rational explanation for a mature product to be so full of useless, annoying alerts. The Evidence Meet the Cannot Family The function…
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Ambiguously Hyperbolic
Language shift is unavoidable, and passing fads of cultural catch phrases and idioms are to be enjoyed. Word’s meanings shift, begin to lose force, take on secondary contrary meanings, and eventually…
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Dark Side of the Town Hall
For the second Presidential Debate of the 2008 Obama / McCain presidential race, I tried an old psychedelic expirament: synchronization with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon . It worked better than…
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A failed analogy to stock market shorting practices
For Halloween I borrowed some candy from a neighbor. See, I was counting on nobody liking the candy by the end of the night, so by borrowing it instead of wearing a great costume and earning it up…
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On C.S. Lewis
Quotation collections are history’s microblogs. C.S. Lewis’s microblog of apologetic missives is very popular amongst Christians, but we’ve substituted every proper noun with Folgers Crystals, lets…
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gs_linkedin
Dynamically present Linkedin.com profile hresume data on your Textpattern blog Summary gs_linkedin is Textpattern a port of Brad Touesnard’s Wordpress plugin LinkedIn hResume . It grabs the…
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Warp XP
In 2001 I was answering phones for a company that used OS2/Warp on the desktop, while I tried to find a technical job as the dot-coms crashed. Warp was six years old at the time, and pretty terrible…
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The Office: 1912 | Shorpy Photo Archive
None of us have a truly paperless office . The entire idea is an unreal sales pitch. We do have an mostly paperless office. Don’t think so? Look at this governmental office scene from the beginning…
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Making the Gambler's Fallacy Disappear: The Role of Experience — HBS Working Knowledge
The Harvard Business School Working Knowledge blog has posted an interesting paper about the gambler’s fallacy, the notion that when presented with random binary events, we tend to identify patterns…
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MailChannels | Anti-Spam Blog: An update to the email standards
The SMTP RFC’s have been replaced! A few things from the list caught my eye: No spaces are permitted after or before the ‘mail from:’ colon. 587/submission is back in play and recommended Lots of…
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DNS is tricky
US-CERT Vulnerability Notes . An excellent executive summary of the vague version of the vulnerability. A possible explanation of the DNS vulnerability got posted on Matasano Chargen , an excellent…
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obs
Grant: it needs to be updated obviously Grant: hehe Sandra: obs Grant: obs? Sandra: short for obviously Grant: obviously. Right.
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Cutting DNS kite strings
Verisign’s SiteMinder service was an abuse of their role and broke the internet. But I would pay a DNS forwarder to redirect malware domains faster than they can be kited . Someone give…
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Solved problems, and weekend reading
My neighbor and I were victims of the ultimate network attack. I was offline all weekend. So first I finished Dan Geer’s Economics and Strategies of Data Security . Whoa. I bought it based on Richard…
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CharmSec
Ben is dropping this invite in various places : CharmSec What An informal meetup of infosec folks When Wednesday May 14th, 7:00pm Where The Wharf Rat @ Camden Yards Bar side – look for geeky looking…
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SANS GIAC GCFA
I am a “Certified IT Professional”, as of this morning. Just like you hear about on the radio advertisements! Yikes. I’m on on the list and they published my 83% score on the test to become a SANS…
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Hans Reiser: Guilty
The Wired article concludes… From his seat at the defense table, Reiser seemed to offer supporting evidence for that so-called “geek defense” in the form of his own actions, frequently quarreling…
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Logging incident handler activity on the console
During incident handling, time is precious. I try to make myself take notes and communicate about the incident over logged channels like e-mail and IM - to the point that I think some team members…
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Business Meetings
Frustrated by distracted workers so plugged in that they tune out in the middle of business meetings, a growing number of companies are going “topless,” as in no laptops allowed. Also banned from…
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Shmoocon 2008
I’m just returning to work after Shmoocon 2008 – I took Monday off to recover and catch up on sleep. It seemed like the presenters this year were asked for only overview level subject matter. The…
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Syn Phishus
I have nice things to say about the rest of the con. Baked not Fired: Performing an Unauthorized Phishing Awareness Exercise Syn Phishus This talk will illustrate how, without getting fired, to…
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Weekend Convention
I’ll be at the annual nerd convention all weekend. I’ve already made dinner plans for Friday. I don’t know what is up Saturday night for dinner, nor do I know if the Shmoo group has a Saturday night…
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Johnny Winter
I just bought two general admission tickets to see Johnny Winter at The State Theatre in Virginia March 22nd. I haven’t really listened to any recent Johnny Winter – I have Second Winter and it’s…
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Tufte on the iPhone
Edward Tufte has posted a video and essay reviewing successes and failures of presentation and design in Apple’s iPhone. It is an especially easy to digest block of Tufte’s long running attention to…
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Space Ghost Coast to Coast fortunes
The Bill Brasky fortunes never get old. But just in case, I threw together some Space Ghost Coast to Coast fortunes! sgc2c.tar.gz . [ grant@bender var ] $ fortune sgc2c "Did you ever meet Haystack…
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Making Pizza Paradiso Pizza
Pizza Paradiso is my all time favorite neapolitan pizza, beer bar , and restaurant. If ever find yourself in Washington DC, make a point of stopping in. The owner and chef RuthGresser has posted a 17…
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TV-B-Gone II
Kill your television folks! Adbust your counterculture ! Bloggers at one of the major annual electronics conferences used a tv-b-gone to power off electronics used by presenters. What ~hilarious…
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Shmoocon 2008 tickets ordered!
I grabbed 10 Shmoocon tickets this year, and that was forgetting two people. Last year our group was able to upgrade to a suite. We’ll be trying some smooth William Shatner moves to repeat the…