PHP "people" don't really know how to document things very well. At least, not when compared to Perl people. Generally, I've always found documentation by Perl people to be good, fairly complete, and looks like it's written by a technical person. At the very least, there is usually a good example in it which you can "just use", for the most part. Some PHP documentation I have been having to read (outside the PHP manual) looks like it's written by people who have never actually read documentation. Incomplete, silly errors, and a big PITA to actually read all the side-documentation to figure out what they are talking about.

When you are documenting "How to do X", don't say you need to understand Y, which points you to W. Explain how to do X without needing to know Y and W, and refer people to Y and W to "learn more", rather than a pre-requisite.

yceml.net...
google-analytics.com...
doubleckick.com...
googlesyndication.com...

Remember when a website was made up of THE WEBSITE?? I remember that when something was slow, it was because of a large image, not that it's connecting to 10 different remote services to track my usage, serve ads, track clicks, display images, load (usually unneeded) Flash and generally do things to slow down a page load.

Not long ago I pondered what could make someone call them self an SEO Expert. I also noted that my "consulting" website wasn't listed in Google anymore. Well, soon after that, I decided to change that. So, I did some run-of-the-mill SEO things which you can find suggested all over the internet. Today, I remembered I did that and decided to type in the two phrases which I would care about. "Perl consultant" and "Perl consulting".

So, currently #1 for one phrase, and #2 for the other (I will get you Randal!!!)

Can I now say I'm an "SEO Expert"? If not, why not? After all, I went from nowhere to be found, to top spots for TWO phrases which would be most important to me if I were still doing consulting. I'll also note that (as of this writing) I'm also on the 1st page for "CGI Consultant", "CGI Consulting" and "perl programming consultant" (#2 for that one).

No magic, no black-hat tricks, just well published best practices. I'm still seriously wondering what SEO "experts" do that the everyday person can't to bring their website to the top of the SERPs. Ok, ok.. I'm not an "everyday person", but any developer has these same things available, and even a non-tech person can read about these best practices in plain-English and tell their tech people to do it.

Maybe I'll just add "SEO Expert" to my resume.

My bank finally updated their online banking system. With it, came some problems. I've done some voluntary beta testing for them, which I hope has been useful for them. But, here's something I caught *after* release, which was, in a way, funny... but sort of not.

I had to send in my annual money to my HOA. So, I enter a one-time payment, and fill in the FULL payee name "Westbrook in Wilton Homeowner's Association". Well, apparently even though the system truncates the payee name, there was no maxlength on the form field.

This is how the check went out:

Technically, I think I should have deposited the check in my ass.

It's shiny, loud, and yells at me in Japanese. What more can I ask for?

Found the video made at the YAPC in Boca I coordinated. Still makes me laugh...

So I was looking at some connections of my connections on LinkedIn and someone had they they were an "SEO Expert". I've always wondered what exactly an SEO "expert" is. I've done a fair amount of reading on SEO, but wouldn't call myself an "expert". Why? Because it really seems like how search engines index and rank your site is pretty much voodoo. Unless you have worked at Google, MSN, Yahoo!, etc... and are risking lawsuits by breaking confidentiality agreements, you really can't call yourself an SEO "Expert", can you?

Let's face it, SEO isn't brain surgery or even removing an appendix or tonsils. There are best practices, good practices, and bad practices. None of these things aren't freely available to read about on the web (or sit at Borders and look through some books), and how to submit to search engines isn't a mystical secret you need to ask an oracle about.

Before I moved my journal over to this domain (used to be separated at perlguy.com), I had great rankings on Google for 'Perl consulting', 'Perl consultant' and similar things. Always within the top 5. Magic? No. Am I now not showing because of magic? No. I moved the journal here to a 3rd level and believe it's effected my "professional" page. No matter, since I'm employed :-)

But, I still must have done something right because on Yahoo! I still have a high ranking for "perl consultant" (#6 as of writing this), and #3 for "perl consulting", and #8 for "perl resume". For someone who does Perl, and would want to do consulting, that's pretty darn good ranking for those key phrases. I'm sure if I cared enough, I could figure out what happened with my Google rankings and fix it (I think they changed something about 8 months ago, since I saw a lot of sites suddenly lose rankings/index counts they had.. but that's another story). And, for my work I did a Google Sitemap, which brought indexed pages up 100 fold. I certainly wouldn't say I'm an expert for either making the sitemap, nor knowing what it is.

So, how do people think they are an "expert" at SEO? What do they think they know that people who simply spend time reading on SEO practices don't? Anyone know? Anyone out there who calls them self an SEO "Expert" care to say what exactly it is that makes them an "expert"? And, why "expert"? Why not "SEO Professional" and leave it at that?

Now, I'm not saying it's not a valid profession, since it is. People need to keep on top of the changing bits of what search engines are doing. But, an "expert"? Is that even measurable?

Google Photos Stir a Debate Over Privacy - New York Times

A woman got all in a tizzy because you can see her cat in the window when you zoom in on her apartment. So, she asked Google to take the photo off.

I'm not exactly sure why people are concerned about privacy here. If your window is open (or, at least there are no shades drawn) then people can look in, and photos can be taken. But, the funniest thing about this is that nobody knew about her or her cat, now she causes a stir and everyone knows her name, address, etc... It seems like if you were going to complain about privacy, you should do it privately.

For the past few years I work so damn much that I don't have time to tinker with things. Once in a while the school sends home a letter of a sex offender who has registered in the area. I always go online and check out their information, and see where they live. I always wanted to have a Google Map showing where all these dirtbags live, and tonight I finally had the chance to do it.

So, here is the start of my project. It's a simply Google Map with overlays from an XML file which I generate from a script I wrote to scrape the data from the NY Dept. of Criminal Justice. Currently, I'm only doing my county, but may make a few for surrounding counties.

Hopefully, I'll have more time to work on this, since I have some ideas (custom markers for risk levels, adding where they work, tabbed info windows to show more data, etc...). I'd like to make a good page where parents can visit on occasion to see who is where, and keep their kids safe.

I've always said that the work I generally do is meaningless, but maybe this side project isn't. At the very least, I'm having fun with it.

Wi-Fi startup inks first U.S. ISP deal

This may be interesting. I'm not sure if it'd make much sense for me to be a hotspot (my neighbors all use TW as well, and the deer don't carry laptops), but could be interesting in being able to take my laptop about anywhere and use it without hijacking stealing borrowing some bandwidth.

I've been getting more SPAM lately with better subjects. They are more "geeky", and sometimes almost actual sentences. They include topics of sendmail, Linux, and other things which I'd actually be interested in. Of course, they are just for junk stocks, but it's interesting that the subjects appear "targeted". Here's one I just got, which is similar to various others:

"The sendmail chapter has been written and contributed by Vince Skahan."

Not only would 'sendmail' mean something to me, but I do get chapters of books to review from time to time. So, when I get these, they are almost tempting to look at (but, I don't).

VX8600 - LG Electronics USA

After 5 years, I finally got a new cell phone. I was pretty tired of keeping mine taped together (literally), and I was overdue a free one from Verizon anyways. So, I got the LG VX8600 (some seem to call it the "Chololate Flip"). It's pretty damn sexy. The bluetooth works great with my MacBook, the camera takes decent photos and is generally 1000% better than my broken one.

Of course, I don't use my cell much. I work from home, so my home phone is generally fine. And, since my phone has been broken for some time, it's generally off. So, now I have a nice phone I'll never really use.. but at least I feel like I'm in the 21st century with cell phones.

BBspot - MPAA Lobbying for Home Theater Regulations

The MPAA is lobbying congress to push through a new bill that would make unauthorized home theaters illegal. The group feels that all theaters should be sanctioned, whether they be commercial settings or at home.

And...

The MPAA defines a home theater as any home with a television larger than 29" with stereo sound and at least two comfortable chairs, couch, or futon. Anyone with a home theater would need to pay a $50 registration fee with the MPAA or face fines up to $500,000 per movie shown.

AND...

"Just because you buy a DVD to watch at home doesn't give you the right to invite friends over to watch it too. That's a violation of copyright and denies us the revenue that would be generated from DVD sales to your friends," said Glickman. (head of the MPAA)

People get so worried about the gov't, look at the MPAA. They want to know when you watch a movie, what you're watching, and how many people are watching it. Have a TV larger than 29"? Have a sofa? Then they want to say you are a theater. These people are loons.

Web reaches new milestone: 100 million sites - CNN.com

100,000,000 sites and 99,999,000 are absolute crap.

I always wonder why when you unsubscribe from a newsletter/mailing they send you an email saying you were unsubscribed. By unsubscribing I'm saying "Don't email me", so I then get an email saying they won't email me. Just don't email me.

I also hate the ones where they say it'll take a few days or a week to "process the request". What the hell is that? Do they have monkeys to go through the requests and 'approve' them? All this stuff should be automatic. Get my unsubscribe request and remove my email from the database, now.. not in a week. Don't try to get a few more mailings to me, just get me off your list.

And for Gods sake people, include a decent text version of your mailings. Some of us still don't use graphical email clients (like me) and some probably use things to not automatically see HTML. When you have no text version, it's useless. I don't want to "click a link to see it online".. I just want to read it. Your information shouldn't be contained in images, it should be contained in text content.

AOL is so stupid when it comes to trying to block SPAM. When AOL users get an email, they can click a 'This is SPAM' button and essentially report the email as SPAM. Then, AOL keeps track of these complaints against the sender. Once it reaches a certain threshold, you're basically blacklisted. Even emails which have links to your domain can be rejected. We're talking overzealous moves here.

So, I'm sending out some newsletters which I do for work on occassion. We notice a lot of bounces back from AOL. Turns out, we're being blocked (again). So, I call them up to see what's up. Late last year I went through a process to be whitelisted with them, which apparantly I have to do every 6 months. So, I re-applied, but still have this issue to deal with.

I explain to the girl on the phone that them blocking us effects business. And, we don't SPAM. Which, we don't. Everything you get from us is legit. Order notifications, receipts and those e-commercy things. And, newsletters which provide you with links to opt-out of. Well, she can't do a thing aside make a ticket. She said she can't even talk to the people she's making a ticket for. I asked to speak to them, and she said she can't, and I can't. But, at least a ticket was made.

A few days later I get an email in broken English saying the block will be removed and I should "clean [my] email list". I don't know what the hell that means. See, people put themselves on the list by becoming users. How can I clean that up? It made no sense, but whatever, I was being unblocked. I was also put on a feedback loop, which essentially sends me a copy of emails which people are reporting as SPAM. This should prove useful, since I can now make sure these email addesses get off the newsletter list (since somehow clicking an AOL button is easier than clicking a link to opt-out), and investigate what people are making as SPAM.

One or two came in from newsletters. Ok, so you don't want the newsletter.. opt out! It's not hard to do. You can even send an angry email saying "STOP SENDING ME THESE!" and we'll do it for you while you get your rocks off using ALL CAPS at someone just doing their job, and who isn't SPAMing you in the first place.

But, then here was the kicker. A few came in for emails which are Want Agents. A Want Agent is something that you initiate. It's essentially when you tell our system what you want, and when the system gets what you want added to it, it emails you. You want a German pressing of Styx's Mr. Roboto on 7" vinyl? Well, we'll email you when someone adds it to our catalog. It's 100% requested by the user to be done AND you can email an address to remove the Agent, or do it on the website (as explained on the email itself).

I called AOL back. I explained that I'm a little concerned that people can actually REQUEST to get email, then mark it as SPAM, then collectively blacklist our site. The response was that when I get the emails from the feedback loop, I should remove those emails from whatever mailings are being sent. I said "Well, but the damage is done already.. they already reported the email, and you guys already counted it against us. I have no way to be pro-active." No answer. Then, I add "Plus, you guys strip the email address it's being sent to!" Which, they do. Luckily, I add it to the headers on the way out, so I do know the address. But, still stupid to tell me to remove addresses which they make efforts to strip out of feedback loop emails.

I think this is all pretty stupid. They allow their users (which, frankly, aren't the collective bright bulbs of the internet world) to effect companies in this way. There is obviously no quality control of what people are reporting. It's like the Wild West of SPAM reporting. We're not sending you emails on "V 1 A G 4 R /\" or selling you home loans. We're sending thing which you requested. And you say it's SPAM, likely hoping it will just filter into your SPAM box, but your moronic ISP uses the information to use against companies sending email.

It's total crap. They say you break the TOS, but they have no frikkin clue if you really did or not.

Oh, and Yahoo!.. don't get me started on Yahoo! You can't even call them! You have to email them, then they (at least from my experience) ask 100 questions and for "more information", even when you've outlined the situation pretty crystal clear with logs, sendmail sessions, examples, IPs, times, etc... Then, they don't help you and when you, a few weeks later, have the same issue and try to restart the dialog, they don't have your past email history and you have to start ALL OVER AGAIN!

Here's what you can do people. If you use AOL, don't. Get a real ISP for Christs sake. Comcast, Road Runner, Verizon.. whomever! The internet isn't hard to get around.. you don't need the Playskool look of AOL and their crappy service.

Thanks for listening.. AOL you and your email policies suck.

YouTube is the latest fad for everyone. Even myself. I've enjoyed it for some time now, but the fun is different these days. At first, I'd just watch funny stuff, or neat videos. But, now it's kind of fun watching people respond to other peoples videos. The drama that happens makes me laugh. Well, laugh in a sad way sometimes. Sad that I don't have so much time to waste that I can sit around and video myself responding to videos.

One thing I always hated about places like blogspot and livejournal is the drama that happened there. The thing is, you have to read it! On YouTube, you seeeee it! Much better media to see it than to just read what idiots have to say on their journals/blogs (me included).

Exabot has to be the rudest spider out there. They totally ignore robots.txt, actually they don't even seem to look for it. Then, they make requests CONSTANTLY for many pages per second. Rude, rude rude.

Exabot/Exalead.. you guys suck. Welcome to Deny.

They used to use 193.47.80.42 now they use 193.47.80.46, in case anyone wants to be pre-emptive.

Many people really like using CSS. I think it's good for some things, but when you depend on it for the format of the entire page/site, I think it sucks. Not every browser will like the same things, will render correctly or will always do as you expect. All browsers, however, will understand the standard table tags to make a table and obey the positioning. Not so with CSS which tiles things like a table.

After you finally get it all looking nice in IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc... by fiddling and putting in special rules, someone will email saying it looks like crap on their browser, and they don't want to upgrade it.

CSS is like salt. Using just enough to give some flavor is good, but add too much and you have to balance other spices to fix it.

NBC10.com - Local News - On Tape: Rep Won't Let Customer Quit AOL

Funny conversation of a guy trying to cancel his AOL account. If you've ever tried to cancel one (I did YEARS ago, like AOL 1.0 days) they really can make it difficult. This guys experience is probably more the norm.

You can also read about it in the guys blog.

Renting Movies With a Box and a Beam - New York Times

This is a $200 set-top box which allows you to rent ($4 new releases, $2 older ones) movies, and gives you 24 hours to watch them. It can give you up to 100 movies at a time.

I have a feeling this will be on one of those "Top 50 Stupid Products of 2006" lists. There are about 30 different ways right now to get movies from rental stores, movie channels, NetFlix, PPV, PPViD, etc... But, the companies say why they are better than these..

BLOCKBUSTER MovieBeam offers the same sorts of movies at the same prices — but you don't have to make two trips to the video store. You never have to pay late fees. And you never find that all the good movies have already been checked out for the weekend by 7 p.m. on Friday night.

Well, Blockbuster is already competing with the other ways to get movies. I don't think this will take people away from Blockbuster who still (for whatever reason) use Blockbuster. Blockbuster also has a mail service, and you can keep a movie for more than 24 hours.

NETFLIX DVD-by-mail services carry just about every movie ever released on DVD. You get to watch a lot of movies each month for a fixed monthly fee, and you can keep the movies for as long as you like with no late fees. But you may have to wait for weeks for your turn to check out the most popular movies. And your movie selection on a given night is limited to the three you've ordered ahead of time. With MovieBeam, you never declare yourself in the mood for a mindless Adam Sandler comedy, only to find that all you've got on hand are three World War II documentaries.

I don't find it takes weeks to get new releases. I also make sure my queue is a mix of different genre's so I'm NOT stuck with three WWII documentaries. And, if I were, I must have wanted to see them. As well, let's look at price. If you watch 3 DVDs each weekend, that's 12 movies for $20. With Moviebeam, lets say you watch 12 movies, half new ones and half new releases. That's $36 (not to mention the $200 for the box that will likely become outdated pretty quickly and that you only havd 24 hours to watch the movie). So, forgetting the $200, by the above estimate, you'd save $192 to use Netflix. Even if you upgraded to the 4-at-a-time plan, you'd be better off.

HBO After a movie finishes its run in theaters, it generally moves through the system in this sequence: hotels and airlines; home video (like Blockbuster); pay-per-view television; and finally, maybe nine months after the theatrical run, movie channels like HBO and Starz.

HBO sucks. Let's see.. it's a Friday. You'd think some cool movie would be on tonight at 8, right? Nope.. a Big Love marathon starts at 8. But, HBO Family has Footloose on at 8:45! HBO sucks. It's only good for The Sopranos, Big Love, Deadwood, Curb, etc...

Anyways.. I use Netflix for newer movies, and HBO for their original shows. When something I haven't seen, or haven't seen in a while, comes on I record it.

PAY-PER-VIEW Standard pay-per-view offers a very small selection, doesn't let you choose when to start the movie and doesn't offer any pause/rewind/replay features.

Right, and PPV is pretty much on its way out.. see below..

VIDEO-ON-DEMAND PAY-PER-VIEW This newfangled movie-delivery system is probably MovieBeam's biggest competitor. You can start a movie whenever you like, and even pause/rewind/replay it. Here again, though, the selection is very small, and upgrading to the necessary digital cable box can inflate your monthly cable bill by $10 or more.

I think the VoD stuff has a fairly decent selection. MovieBeam can say it has 100 movies, but maybe an average person will want to see 7 of them. I have a billion TV channels, but that doesn't mean there is anything on. I don't know how much extra I pay for a digital box. I don't think $10. And, I have an HD box and not sure if MovieBeam will be giving me my movies in HD like VoD does. Also, even if it does cost $10/month, that's 20 months before it would cost what the MovieBeam would have costed.

So, doesn't sound too appealing to me. All movies on it should be $2, and you should be able to watch them for up to a week (not 24 hours). That way, it would be $24 for those 12 movies, and I wouldn't HAVE to make sure I watch within a certain time period.

Since I've now decided to read the unsolicited poems sent to me, I'm wondering if I should make it a Podcast. Not sure why I would, aside just to do it.. but could be interesting. I'm also thinking of going back-in-time and doing readings for all the ones I've already posted. I have about 18 which I haven't posted yet. I guess it could just be fun for me to find myself on iTunes Music Store.

Have I mentioned lately that I love this thing? Well... I do!

I went to check out this MySpace place, since it seems to be the latest buzzsite of social networking until next months buzzsite on social networking.

The site really blows, so, I don't get it. Half the pages won't even load for me, because people seem to have 10000000 images, 2000000 media files and 7878787877 ways to butcher the English language.

The pages all look like absolute shit, and the "content" people have is embarassing at best. It's sort of like a clearinghouse for poorly designed blogs made by the slightly retarded and highly illiterate population.

Maybe it's not all like that, but what I saw it was. I just did some random looking around... but it looks like everyone and their dog is on there.

So, two days ago my Powerbook died on me. I'm not exactly sure what's wrong, but it's all messed up. So, last night I went to the Apple Store and got a new 2Ghz MacBook Pro.

This thing rocks. Getting all my software back kind of sucks, and is a pain, but in the long run, this will be a good thing. Better wireless reception, brighter screen, fast as hell, builtin iSight and generally nice and shiny.

So many real estate agents have absolutely horrible websites. Bad design, no features and can sometimes not find what you're looking for. I've been looking at some Vermont sites, and can't get a listing of just want I want. All I want to see are cabins, with electricity and a bathroom (as opposed to a 'camp' which is many times with no bathroom and only generator hookups).

Yeah yeah.. I know I'm building a new house and can't really get a cabin in Vermont right now. But, I can look! That's something I've always wanted. A nice getaway cabin in Vermont we can go use on weekens and holidays (and maybe rent at other times).

Before we moved to Florida we looked into doing this. Actually, we almost just moved to Vermont! But, we did see some nice place. I remember this one A-Frame house on 6 acres for $80k. Should have gotten it!

Apple MacBook Pro 'fastest Windows XP notebook' | Reg Hardware

Have I mentioned I want a MacBook Pro? I know my birthday isn't for some time now, but since nobody who regularly reads this got me squat for the past 33 years.. you should make up for it and get me one. Or, at least an iPod! Cheap bastards! ;-)

For the life of me I can't get the MT templates for my comment page to match the rest of the site. Starting to annoy me that it's not all cohesive. I'm missing "something".

I really hate Sybase. Nothing more, just that I really hate Sybase.

Every once in a while I get an "invite" from a friend to join some website for the privilege of viewing their photos (or reading their blog, etc...) I have yet to joing any of these things, becuase I simply don't need another account to remember I have, or remember the account info.

I remember, not too long ago, when people would simply post photos on their website. Either with an image gallery script, or simply uploading them to a directory. Then, all I had to do it bookmark a URL, and I'm done. Nice and easy. Not go through registering, opting out of newsletters, remembering the site info (yes, my browser could remember it for me), then logging in to view things when I want. That's a lot of hassle to look at photos. Especially, when it seems everyone uses different sites.

C'mon folks! Free your photos! Don't use sites which require people to get an account to see them. If you want to share your photos, share them.. don't hide them behind accounts. Let them be free!

Our All Powerfull cable company, which we also get digital phone service from, now gives us caller ID on our TV. So, no more picking up the phone to look at the caller ID and see I don't want to answer, I don't even have to look away from the TV to know I don't want to answer! w00t!

Kelly sent me a Flickr invite so I could see her photos. So, I follow the link only to find that they make you have a Yahoo! ID to sign up. I don't want a Yahoo! ID... I have enough IDs and accounts in my life that a Yahoo! one has no value to me. Plus, it seems like you need a Yahoo! one and THEN make a Flickr one.. so that's 2 accounts to view someones photos.

Pretty stupid.

I gotta say, I love getting surprise checks in the mail twice a year. Well, it's no surprise when they would come, just that they do! I thank all you Germans who bought my book over the last 6 months!

The must have opened a shipping center in Albany, since I now get my movies 2 days after I send them back in (send in on Monday, get back on Wednesday). Pretty awesome!

Now, if we could just watch The Aviator which has been sitting on the shelf for 6 weeks now.

There is a possability that part of the system I work on will go to Java. It's the "display layer" part of the system. Basically, the templating and customer facing stuff (JSP, most likely) while the rest of the system will stay Perl. Now, I'm not exactly close minded to bringing in new technologies and having a hybrid system if it makes sense to do. I know Perl isn't always the end-all be-all of e-commerce systems, and other technologies may have their place (aside PHP, I really don't like PHP.. and Cold Fusion).

I've had a few discussion with the person who thinks Java may be the thing to use for that layer of the system. His background his more of Java than Perl (which is somewhat new to him), so I'd figure there is a natural bias.. as there is with me. But, I have yet to hear of a concrete reason why Java would be better to use than Perl for this. Of course, we don't have any prototypes of something with Java and Perl to do benchmarks, yet. That sort of "proof is in the pudding" is very important to me. If Java were 2x faster, and used less system resources... then I'd think there is a benefit. If somehow Java is better for RAD (Rapid Application Development), then I'd think there is a benefit. But, I'm not sure how you could prove that anyways. The 'rapid' part really comes down to the programmers.

So, I've asked for reasons why Java would be better, not good, but better to use. I have yet to get a really good reason. Here is what I seem to get:

* It's more strict than Perl, so code will end up more clean and structured since you can better enforce things. I don't buy this one. First, I don't like a strict language.. I like a language to DWIM and DWIW. This was a reason for my early on hatred of PHP and Cold Fusion. I kept saying to myself "WHY CAN'T I DO XYZ?? ARGH!!" or "NO!! THAT'S NOT WHAT I WANTED!! ARGH!!" Plus, you can have ugly and unreadable code in ANY language. That all depends on the programmer(s) and the development process. If you have guidelines and peer reviews, code should mainly come out clean and maintainable (and documented.. gasp).

* There are more "tools" for Java. I'm a "vi(m)" guy. That's the only tool I use. I tweak it to do what I want for Perl, but, that's it. I don't use IDE's, I don't use anything fancy. I'm an old-school commandline text-based guy (I still use mutt for my email and vi(m) for all my editing). I figure the more tools there are for a language, the more difficult the language is to develop in in it's raw form. Are these tools a crutch for people? Take something like HTML for example. There was a time when we wrote HTML by hand, but now everyone and their dog uses FrontPage or Dreamweaver to write it. That's fine if it's just helping debug or fine tune, but not when you can't write HTML without it. Same thing here. There is a line where tools become a crutch. I can write Perl in vi(m), textpad, notepad, pico, emacs or any other plain text editor. The only other "tool" I may need is perltidy to make sure my personal style can be transformed into something others are good with. I have had Eclipse mentioned to me over and over. I did just find out it has a Perl plugin (EPIC) and I know the Eclipse folks want to add some native Perl support. So, that whole argument may go away. But, I'm not sure that "tools" is a reason to use a language over another.

I don't think there have been any other major reasons given to me. It ends up being a tit-for-tat thing. Why am I not trying to defend Perl in this? Well, the system is written in Perl already, and it's doing a fine job. It doesn't *need* to be replaced, altough some things can be re-written and re-architected within the process. I think it's more costly and risky to switch languages and move to a hybrid system, and there should be some good reasons to do so.

Has anyone had experience with both languages and has an opinion? Anyone worked for a company which moved from Java to Perl or Perl to Java? Would there be a benefit of Java over Perl in the display layer? (Speed aside, since benchmarks would be done)

I've notcied that over time, my journal has become less tech and more, er, less tech :-) I don't mentioned book tech reviews I'm doing, I don't mention coding things and don't much comment on IT things in general anymore. I'm not sure why. I think it has to do with tech/programming being such a large part of my life, that I one day started scaling back on it. Maybe a Geek Burnout Avoidance thing.

I'm not really sure which is more interesting.. or if anything I write is interesting. Then again, I'm not sure it's meant to be interesting. I'm not a "blogger", per se. I'm a person who uses his "blog" to journal. I actually use it to see what I was thinking/doing a year ago, two years ago, etc... I don't do it to change the world, or become blog-popular.

Anyways.. I think I will start talking a bit more tech again. Being that I'm pretty solitary in my work situation, I have no immediate avenue to talk geek, so I have to make this an outlet for that again.

Dilbert (JPEG Image, 750x544 pixels)

I think my Airport card is crapping out. Not getting reception downstairs, and not even in the same room as the base station, unless I'm 2 feet away. Unless there is some serious stuff flying in the air to disrupt it, I think it's crapping out.

I really didn't want to have to get a new laptop, yet.

The World According to Ballmer

Speaking to a packed auditorium at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., on May 12, Ballmer trumpeted the ripe opportunities around Microsoft's sprawling business and questioned the ability of Google (GOOG ) to maintain its edge. Clearly alluding to Microsoft's key Internet search rival, Ballmer said: "The hottest company right now -- the one nobody thinks can do any wrong -- may just be a one-hit wonder."

Yes, the "one-hit wonder". Let's see: web searching, video searching, catalogs (Froogle), directions/maps, Gmail, Adsense, News, image searching, groups, etc...

Talk about "fuzzy math". There is an old Abbot and Costello routine where Costello explains how 1 + 1 is 3 (or 7, I don't recall) which Ballmer must have learned his arithmatic from.

perl.com: Inside YAPC::NA 2005

I love it when my name is mentioned in things. I'm looking forward to YAPC this year, and finally made my hotel reservation this morning. Next.. to figure out how I'm getting up there! :-)

From IRC. I'm not actually sure when it was said.. when I went to that screen this morning I saw it, and it made me laugh:

Python has a bright future behind it.

I hate it when you submit a bug for a module on CPAN, then 8 months later the maintainer writes back saying it "works fine". Well, no, it doesn't. So, I had to respond with a full example of it not working "fine" this time. Maybe he'll fix it (could just use the solution I provided originally) in 8 more months. It's like he didn't even try it over the past 8 months. Not hard to do, or at least provide the code he saw it working with so I can see it working.

Just makes me annoyed. When I get bug reports, I get to 'em.

In either case, he could fix them but I still wouldn't use the latest version of the module. I've since hacked it to fix various bugs, and enhanced it in more ways. But, it should work for people who need to use the CPAN version.

I found two seperate local websites which both contained SQL injections. This was about a week ago. Being the nice guy I am, I emailed both companies. A week later, injections are still there. Idiots. These places must share a brain, since they are both in ASP, and both are injectable, and neither has fixed the problem yet.

A while back I found some security issues with a local online banking service. I contacted them by phone, since I'm a customer. Someone there actually sounded interested, but I never followed up to see if they made the changes needed. Not like I'd go public with my findings, unless I become a non-customer :-)

So, I think altering these people was a good deed. And, if they use the info to fix the problems, they'd be doing their jobs.

I'm not quite sure why fools fall for phishing scams, but they do. Have you ever read some of these emails? I just got this one, and if anyone falls for it, they kind of deserve it:

Dear Customer,

You have recieved this email, because you or someone else try to access your banking account
from different locations. For security purposes, our bank requerments are to open an
investigation in this matter. Our online banking system requered IP logging. When your
originate IP used with your account(s), linked in our online banking system is changed,
your account are open for investigation and limited, until the holder authorize his information
that we store on our secure servers. Please check your ISP (Internet Service Provider) settings
for proxy or masquerade your IP address. This could be unsafe for your banking with us.

To help speed up this investigation, please access the following link to be sure you are on
our secure webservers and authorize your banking account. After the authorization is
successful complete, your banking with us will continue to work as normal.

https://url.to.scam/

Please note: If we do not receive the appropriate account authorization within 48 hours,
then we will assume this Charter One banking account is fraudulent and will be suspended.
The purpose of this authorization is to ensure that your banking account has not been fraudulently used
and to combat the fraud from our community.

Charter One Securities, Inc.

Oh no! "someone else try to access" my account!! And since they "requered IP logging" and my "originate IP used with" my account is somehow different!

How do people fall for this crap? Why would people believe their bank would contact them via email for ANYTHING important? Banks have phone numbers, and would use them. But, these emails are sometimes fun to read.

It Pays To Read License Agreements

Do you read EULAs? This guy did and found a clause which got him $1,000 from the software vendor. In the EULA it stated that you would get "special consideration", including possible cash, if you emailed them to the address they stated. After 3,000 downloads of this freeware, this guy was the only one to email.

This shows how many people don't read EULAs. They are a pain in the ass. They are long, boring, and may possibly contain something you don't agree with. There is no TOC or search functionality in them. You can't search for "privacy" or "monitor" or "track" in them. Actually, that would be pretty helpful. I'd love to be able to search a EULAs text for certain words, instead of having to read them.

Do I read them? Sometimes I do. If it's freeware, I usually do. I'll at least give it a very close skimming. If I purchased it, I'll usually just skim. That's another problem with EULAs... if you purchased the software, and don't agree with it, you generally can't return it.

The HDD on the box upstairs finally took a dump. Of course, this happens the day before a snow day (last night). Since I have to work during the day, it's nice when Kyla can play some games on the computer.

Being the geek dad, I had a good temporary solution. Download an ISO to make a bootable CD of Linux. I chose SLAX, since the download size is small. All I really need to Konquerer so she can get on the web, and didn't need to wait for a 800M-ish Knoppix download.

Downloaded the ISO, burned it, slapped it in, and now she's online playing Barbie games.

Damn, sometimes I'm just such the problem solver.

Lose your password for your Time Warner internet account? Well, just go there and do something where they give you a receipt. It's printed right on it, with your username. Very nice.

I noticed this when we went to swap our cable box for a HD box. But, didn't actually try it out until today. Since, I never knew our login or password.

Why the hell would they do this? May as well just write it on a Post-It and hand it to the person. Then, when they throw that away, as they will with the receipt, it's still plainly available for any dumpster diver. The receipt wasn't even for anything internet related!

Plus, since it's on my yellow carbon copy, it's on the original. So, anyone who has access to the receipts in the office has access to your login information. This wouldn't matter for those who would have it anyways, but I'm sure some people there aren't supposed to have access to it. Say, ohhhh, the cleaning crew.

So, I hopped onto their online support chat thingy:

SteveW : hello
Kevin : Hi Steve
Kevin : Why are the username/password printed on receipts?
SteveW : this is for your record keeping
Kevin : But, isn't that a little bit of a security risk?
Kevin : It's on my receipt, and it was when I swapped my cable box for a HD one
Kevin : Not even RoadRunner related
SteveW : well we give the receipt to you
Kevin : Yes, the carbon of it
SteveW : correct
Kevin : But, the original is left in the office. With plain text username/password
Kevin : for anyone to see
Kevin : And, you are not told the info is on the receipt. Most people likely don't notice and just toss it.
Kevin : Seems like an uneeded security risk to people.
SteveW : well i can bring it to someones attention
Kevin : I'd appreciate that. I don't see the purpose of it being there. Username, maybe, password.. no.

Then I just got off, since he didn't seem to care. It's somehow for "record keeping". I don't know what it has to do with record keeping. Records should be kept based on your account number. Stupid.

My mom sent Kyla 'Zoo Tycoon' as a gift. So, last night I installed it for her. She didn't want me to help or do the tutorials... just wanted to go at it. I remember when I used to play Sim City (back in the day, when it came out) and how complicated it can be. But, Kyla has been computer savvy since age 3 or 4, and I knew she could probably figure out some of the basics.

I came downstairs for about 20 minutes, went back up and she already built a few exhibits. She made them a bit small (like 200^ft for 5 lions), but pretty good for 20 minutes of clicking around. My little geek in training :-)

The game is actually pretty awesome. The three of us were up pretty late playing it, together. When it got too late, I saved the game. At the time, we have a budget of $450k. When Kyla got up this morning, she went right into the office, turned on the game, and started playing. I was cleaning, so I didn't go bother yet. About an hour went by and we have breakfast, then I went up to play with her. She was -$33k. She didn't understand that when you build things, you pay for 'em :-) But, we have fun feeding small animals to the lions and tigers.

We started another zoo, and we were doing pretty darn good. I'm starting to get the hang of what needs what, what to buy, and how fast to expand. Kyla, on the other hand, just wants to add more animals. Suzy came home from work, so she started playing with Kyla. I was out of the room for maybe an hour, went upstairs and there was a -$22k budget! When I had left, it was $200k. I'm not sure who bankrupt the zoo (*cough*), but I know that Kyla wasn't the one sitting in the chair!

I think they are making a dinosaur zoo right now. I'll go check it out. One day I'll start my own and see how well I can get it to survive. Pretty fun.

Today I got a phishing scam email for Amazon. The target domain was hosted on Yahoo! The WHOIS info showed the tech contact as domain.tech@YAHOO-INC.COM, so that's one of the places I sent the email (as well as abuse@). So, YAHOO-INC.COM rejects the email because clamav detected a phishing scam in the email. Um.. no shit!

You cannot report the scam because the email containing the scam will be filtered because it contains a scam. Hopefully, abuse@ for yahoo and Amazon get it, and probably the many others reporting the same one.

I hope people are enjoying it right now. Pretty cool. Have a great view of it on the deck. I think the next one is in 2007 if you missed it.

Have you seen the new AOL ads on TV? Where they say:

"When a costomer has an idea to make the internet better, we listen and do it"

No you don't. I don't know that AOL has ever made the internet better in any way. And, these ads perpetuate the falicy to its customers that AOL *is* the internet. It's not. It's a bubble within the internet. This isn't exactly honest advertising. Honest advertising would be:

"When a customer has an idea to make our service better, we listen"

Giving a "report card" on what your child is doing is NOT improving the internet. It's an enhancement to the AOL service. And, the problem is I would be a decent percentage of AOL users actually still think AOL *is* the internet.

Suzy has agreed to get a flat screen. She still wasn't sure what they were last week, so we went over to Worst Buy so she can see. Once she saw them, she was like "I like these, we should get one". Ok, twist my arm! We then went over to a local place called Rex, which has better prices. They had some nice plasmas for a decent price ($2,100 for a 37"). But, I really don't want a plasma.. I want an LCD. They only had 30" LCDs. A Westinghouse (which I can find no real reviews about) and a Sharp Aquos. I think 30" may be too small, and really want a 37". The Aquos are really nice. What I like about them is they come with a seperate table-top box which makes all your connections. That way, you have fewer wires running up the wall. Great idea. The 37" is about $3,400 right now. Still a little more than I'd like to spend on a TV.

So, my plan is to wait for the upcomming holiday season. I'm sure there will be more price drops and sales. Maybe a good one will dip in the $2,200-$2,500 range. Doubt it, but you never know.

Anyone done good research on brands? I'm figuring the Sharp Aquos, Phillips, Sony or LG. Am I missing a good brand to look at? I'm sure there is some brand which is really one of the Big Boys under a different name.

It would be cool to be able to do call transfers from a cell phone to another phone, like a land-line. So when you're on the cell phone in the car, and come in the door.. you can just transfer the call to your home phone.. pick it up, and keep talking.

I like to forget USE_DSO=1 when installing Apache/mod_perl the first time. That way I get to do it twice!!! I loooooove watching it compile! *cough*

Looks like Time Warner updated the software on our DVRs. I noticed two new options. First, "Send to VCR". I'm sure I could Google for how to make that send to DVD-R, or grab output with a computer. But, makes getting a DVD burner more enticing.

The second one, I'm most excited about. I can now schedule recordings for a show, only in a certain timeslot. I'm soooo happy about this. Before, you had two ways to do this. First, record every occurence of a show. So if I want every Nip/Tuck, it would record EVERY Nip/Tuck. I'm lazy, and didn't enjoy deleting all the recordings I didn't want.. and there could be a lot when you record a lot of shows. The other way was to schedule a recording for a timeslot on a channel. But, in the playback menu it only shows "Scheduled Recording" instead of the show name which was recorded. Seeing 10 "Scheduled Recording" entries in the menu was sort of lame. But now... it seems to work more intuitively. Plus, makes recording anime much better.

Apple - iMac G5

Oh wow.. daddy like. Everything, including the G5, is the size of the monitor. Do I smell a G5 PowerBook coming?

Dear Santa...

Two folks seems to be having issues with TypeKey and my journal. It seems they log in, write the post, then when they submit they are asked to log in again. Kell seems to have no problems.. I haven't had a problem yet. Anyone else?

I'll see if I can figure something out..

I'm now requiring TypeKey based logins to post to this site. Why?

* Curb SPAM. I get a crapload of blogspam every day, and it's plain annoying to have to clean them out.
* Most people who post here, I could really care less if they do and they would probably be too lazy to register
* Those of you which I like posting here (Alan, Kell, Mr. Isle of Wight, Slow Grand Cherokee, etc...) would probably take the time to register and continue to post.
* I'm tired of the idiots I used to work with trying to bust my balls, in a pretty lame manner I might add. I doubt they will make accounts, and if they do I can easily ban them. If they continue to register, get banned, register, get banned, etc... then they are even more lame than I already think and really need to get a life.
* I feel like it :-)

Maybe later on I'll relax it and allow non-registered posts, but for now I think I'll try this out. If anyone has any issues with the site, feel free to comment or email me!

Perl Foundation Store | CafePress

Help support The Perl Foundation by buying something that says Perl and has an onion on it. You know you want to.

Yahoo! News - U.S. Steers Consumers Away From IE

I've said for years what the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team now says... don't use IE. If you haven't listened to me, or about every security person in the last 5 years.. maybe you'll listen to the gubment.

I connect to a VPN, and sometimes have an issue. When the VPN gets disconnected for some reason (not because I disconnected it), my default gateway route seems to change to something I don't want.

Here is what I have in my /etc/ppp/ip-up:

/sbin/route delete default ip.of.the.vpn
/sbin/route add default 192.168.1.1
/sbin/route add XXX.XXX.0.0 ip.of.the.vpn
/sbin/route add NN.NNN.0.0/16 ip.of.the.vpn

When I connect, this is fine. All my VPN traffic goes through the VPN, and uses all things VPN. And, when I connect to the rest of the world, it works fine. So, it's a split-tunnel.

And, my ip-down:

/sbin/route add XXX.XXX.0.0
/sbin/route delete NN.NNN.0.0/16
/sbin/route add default 192.168.1.1

When I disconnect by hand, this works fine. I could probably have nothing in this file, but do.

But, those random disconnects (and reconnect) seem to sometimes make my default gateway the ip.of.the.vpn. I don't notice until Adium suddenly disconnects, and I do a netstat to look at the routing table... then I have to run ip-up by hand.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Wired 12.07: Copy This Article & Win Quick Cash!

Remember the email that said Bill Gates would send you money if you forward it? Here's how it all started.

The HDD on the DVR finally took a crap this weekend. It started a few weeks ago where recorded or paused things would "skip" when being played back. This weekend, we couldn't record or playback anything. Called Time Warner, and they came today and replaced the box, and gave me a credit for the whole month of service for the DVR (only $5, but hey.. they offered it).

I'm glad I chose the DVR service from TW over a TiVo. Only $5/month for it, I have yet to record 50 hours of stuff, and if it breaks.. they come and give me a new one.

Thanks to Matt, I now have a Gmail account. Thanks Matt!

I set up a new website, Ez Buy Online which is a product feed over Amazon. Basically, you shop there and buy from Amazon. There is a posters section which has thousands of posters from another product feed. I also added Google Adsense ads to this site, and those (so click them dammit!).

I figured, I have done enough random jobs with people using sites like these, that I may as well do my own and try it out. Thanks to Amy and her hubby for the logo.

One fun thing that I did was take some of the cobwebs off my mod_rewrite-fu. I made almost all of the dynamic links of the the site (not the poster part) look like html files for better indexing. I don't need to do every single one, but will probably find some I didn't do and do them later.

Google War

Microsoft granted patent for double-click

Soon, Microsoft will probably patent the power button, a cable which transfers power from an outlet to a computer and air.

Hack this site! Test your skills on these hacking challenges!

I finally got around to checking this site out. It's a good diversion, and somewhat fun. It let's you (legally) work your way through trying to find exploits in different "sites" and applications. Since yesterday, here is what I have completed so far:

Realistic Missions
Level 1 complete
Level 2 complete
Level 3 complete
Level 4 complete
Level 5 complete
Level 6 complete
Level 7 complete
Level 8 complete

Basic Web Hacking
Level 1 complete
Level 2 complete
Level 3 complete
Level 4 complete
Level 5 complete
Level 6 complete
Level 7 complete
Level 8 complete
Level 9 complete

Application Challenges
Level 1 complete
Level 2 complete

It helps to have a basic knowlege of SQL, JavaScript and detective work.

Ok, being constantly joe-jobbed is one thing. Getting a crapload of subscribe/unsubscribe emails from mailing lists from them is another. But, this has now gone too far.

Your Confirmation is Needed for TheBackstreetBoys.com E-Mail List

IT pros make life difficult for IT companies - The Economic Times

Because of the amount of outsourcing to India, many of their folks want more wages, which make it less cheap. So, companies in India may have to outsource.

The Laporte Report: Comcast Fires TechTV Staff

I watched TechTV since it came on the air (it was called something other than TechTV, ZDTV or something). It was, once, a good channel to watch. Then, I started getting bored with it and stopped watching. Then I would watch some of the anime they started showing, then stopped that since there seemed to be a commercial every 30 seconds.

Then I stuck with The Screen Savers about every night, since sometimes they had good things on there. Then I got bored of that since I was tired of hearing how to overclock every other night, how many ways to mod a case, and what new MP3 player is out this week, as opposed to last week.. and began tired of the same old things being hashed and rehashed. I finally stopped watching the channel altogether.

So, I guess I don't really care about this :-) Sucks that people will be losing their jobs, and kind of sucks that the channel won't be there for those who found it useful. But, I look at it this way.. if cable were a la carte, I wouldn't buy it anyways.

NewsForge | Los Angeles LUG pres resigns over military Linux use

He can quit if he wants, but I think he reason about the military using Linux is sort of silly. The military uses cotton, paper, rubber, metal and a whole host of other things as well. I wouldn't stop wearing green because the military wears green. Same with anything doing with Linux. Even if you disagree with the war, Linux didn't start the war. It's a tool. Not only that, it's a free tool! I'd rather the gov't be using Linux (free) than Microsoft (not free, evil empire, crappy). I know the military uses Perl, but wouldn't stop using it or distance myself from any part of the community because of it. Even if I found out that Perl scripts were used to launch bombs.

I once turned down a job from a military contracting company, however. They basically wanted me to make the process of creating missle circuit boards faster. I thought to myself that it seemed like there are enough missles, and I didn't need to help them make more, faster. Not that there aren't things I wouldn't do for a military contractor, that was just one I didn't feel at the time was right for me. But, I didn't stop using Linux, Perl, shell or CAD (well, I don't use CAD) because they use these things to design and make the brains of a missle.

I like one of the comments under that article:

Did he resign in protest because China might be abusing human rights and they use Linux? Did he resign in protest because some nefarious criminal enterprise was using Linux to shake down little old ladies or murder other crime family members? Did he resign in protest because the movie industry uses Linux in render farms and they support the MPAA?

A9.com > Search Technologies

The "new" a9.com search engine, by Amazon (a9 is short for Amazon.com). It's a front-end to Google. But, the search results look like Alexa results.. which is another search engine owned by Amazon... which is powered by Google.

So the results on a9.com are provided by Google. Also by a9.com, which gets its results from Google and Alexa. And Alexa, which gets its results from Google.

Is this a front end to a front end of a front end? Why not just go to the horses mouth.. Google?

Microsoft Discloses Huge Number Of Windows Vulnerabilties > April 13, 2004

Only 14 of them here. And to think, people were chuckling that a single proof-of-concept trojan for OS X came out (who probably sat there reading about it on the Windows machines).

A few days I added a new procmail rule to get rid of anything that comes from mailer-daemon or postmaster, which isn't to one of the addresses I actually send email from and send them to /dev/null. Now I don't see all the joe-job bounces! Yay! This cuts down on excess of 300 emails per day I had to weed through. Now, I'm just back to the dribble of SPAM which beats my filters, but that's tolerable.

Added this to my ~/.screenrc

hardstatus alwayslastline '%-w%{.wB}%n %t%{-}%+w %=%{.w} %H: %l %{-}%d/%m %c'

Now I have a nicer, permanent, status bar on the bottom with the names of my windows, the current one a different color, server load and time.

It's a great night out. No moon, but got to see Saturn, Jupiter, Mars and Venus in the telescope. Really cool stuff.