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I don’t even remember the last time a spam-comment made it onto my blog. All “new-comers” get moderated automatically and every few days I clear out the spam-comments in my queue (the screenshot above shows the beginning of my moderation queue as of a few minutes ago).

Akismet is just working for me and I can tell from other blogs I visit on a regular basis, it (or some other form of comment-spam-blocking system) is working there as well.

Is it really still worth for spammers to try to clog comments on public blogs? Or are those hits just from rogue bots that have not been told to stop yet? Weird in annoying way …

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There’s a very interesting article at: Computer Security Research - McAfee Avert Labs Blog talking about ways how crackers make it into your bank accounts. This time we are not talking about Phishing, but instead code-injection on your very own computer. The crackers will trick you into downloading a malicious piece of software onto your computer. Once installed, the software will monitor your browser traffic and will become active when you go to various banking sites. In one example, the software will bring up a legit looking error message telling you that the TAN you used is invalid and will ask you to enter another one. The falsely illegit TAN will be shipped off to the crackers and they can use it to make a transaction from your account.

• never install stuff from unknown/untrusted sources.
• run an application like SpyBot on a regular basis and make sure you keep it up-to-date.
• double-/triple-check when you logon to your banking site. If something looks/behaves differently on the banking site, don’t go any further, but instead talk to your bank.

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A few days ago a link to http://www.pdf-mags.com/ made the rounds here at work. pdf-mags is a site that aims to collect online PDF magazines or at least links to sites that serve those magazine. Art, Fashion, Photography, Design - there’s something for every taste cataloged on their site.

Being interested in photography, I downloaded the latest issue of WebPhotoMag. It’s a bit on the “big” side (35MByte), but it is certainly worth the download.
I can’t say that I’m an expert when it comes to “Disability in Cambodia” or that I even had a remote interest in the subject in the past, but after paging through the PDF document with its 86 pages featuring the work and narrative of Simon Larbalestier I’m once again amazed at how well photo-essays manage to introduce you to a subject in the most interesting way. Simon provides some haunting images and just enough text to describe the context without over-narrating.

Great stuff - I’ll be checking out more pdf-mags …

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Shhh - here’s a little secret for you. After Mike took over the Tesuque Village Market a few months ago he decided to add something “unique” to the Market. Within a few weeks they constructed an authentic Pizza oven right outside the main entrance to the restaurant. After some weeks of experimenting with different woods and doughs they found a winning combination. Since then you can enjoy pizza at the Market in the evening during the week and all day on weekends.

A few nights ago Pia and I stopped by and picked up a sausage/mushroom/olive combo with some fresh basil sprinkled on top. It only takes a few minutes to get from the Market to our home, but she managed to devour 2 slices on the way.

If you’re looking for thick, greasy, dripping kind of pizza, then the market is the wrong place for you. However if you like the thin, delicate, crusty stuff then I can highly recommend the Market.

And, shhhh, it’s a secret ….

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We had another open house yesterday and needed to get out of the house for while to make room for the gazillion people who wanted to look at our house (well, it was acutally only two couples, but that’s better than nobody).

Given the warm weather over the last few days, I decided to take Pia to the zoo in Albuquerque and Michele decided to join us.

ABQ zoo: flamingos

I always feel a bit guilty taking photographs of animals in captivity. So the shot above is going to be the only shot of “animals” from the zoo.

It was a beautiful day. Temperatures were up in the 80s and my neck/top of my head show some clear signs of too much sun-exposure. I was happy that I applied at least some sun-screen to Pia …

About half way through the zoo, there was a nice shady area where we rested for a few minutes. This looked just way too nice to not being captured on film ….

ABQ zoo: Pia and Michele

Right after taking this photo, Pia complained that she wants to take at least one photo with a “silly face”. Usually “silly faces” is all I get from her. So, here’s the “silly” version of the one above …

ABQ zoo: silly face

I’m really happy that the two of them get along so well.

On our way home we stopped at Flying Star Cafe in Albuquere for some food and drinks. Michele’s friend Debbie, who happens to live just a few blocks from the cafe, joined us for a while. Of course she had to rub it in that she’s about to leave for the Domenican Republic for three weeks. Arggghhh - I think I seriously need some exposure to warm waters soon. Have fun Debbie - I know you will !

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After the arrival of the new 1TB disk from LaCie I decided to offload the 45GB of music from one of my aging disks connected to the Linksys NSLU2. As data was phsyically copied from one device to another one, I decided to use one of my PCs to do the copying (using the Ethernet interface instead of the wireless interface).
I mounted both drives, old and new and simply dragged the “music” folder from the NSLU2 attached device to the LaCie disk. Copy progress dialog comes up … mentions some 180 mins to copy all the files … fine … go ahead and copy the stuff. 3 hrs later I look at the PC again. The dialog has gone, no error on the screen, which seems to indicate that things have been copied successfully.

Back on the Mac, I “File > Export …” my entire library from iTunes (producing a Library.xml file on my Desktop). Next I change the Preferences for iTunes to look at the new “music” folder on the LaCie disk, followed by some perl massaging of the Library.xml file (I just change all the “Location”-pathnames to point at the new location of the files). In iTunes I delete all entries/playlists and “File > Import …” the changed Library.xml file. Whoa! Roughly 1500 files are missing from the collection after the import is done.
I backtrack my steps and don’t find any errors. Where did I miss those 1500 files? I end up creating file-lists for the old location and the new location (”find . -type f -print” on both of the shared volumes). After writing some more scripts, I figure that those 1500 files simply did not get copied. Windows Explorer completed the copy-process without errors/warnings, however those files are just not there.

Should I copy everything again? On a different system?

I decide against it. Back on the Mac, I mount both volumes and use rsync to synchronize the volumes. If you have not used rsync before, let me tell you, it’s one of those command line utilities that is essential in every collection. Besides being able to synchronize two “directories” on your local system, it can do the same job over the internet (using ssh, rsh, etc.). I’ve used rsync extensively in the past when I had to make sure that several machines had the exact same copy of the same files.
Because the clocks on both of my file servers are not in sync, the first attempt with “rsync” seems to copy all the files again. I quickly figure that timestamps of the files are the issue and I rerun the command with the “–size-only” argument. This way “rsync” will only use the filename and the filesize to determine whether to copy a file or not.

After an hour the copy process has completed. I look at the list of files that were not copied via Windows Explorer and I don’t see a pattern that would give me a clue as to why those why not copied in the first place.

Some more processing of the Library.xml file and I’m ready to import the library back in iTunes. As expected everything is there this time and operations seem to be snappier as well. And before somebody suggests that I should have done a “Consolidate Library …” after changing the iTunes music folder: remember that the Mac is wireless only and it would have taken quite some time to perform that operation.

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I’m on Tom Udall’s mailing list (yeah, don’t talk about the site’s design). Every few weeks we get an update from him on what he is and has been up to. One of the recent newsletters talked about renewable engery sources and how he’s a strong proponent of a federal shift to increase the establishment of those sources.

I took the time to respond to his newsletter (via the site above) and told him about my frustration about the (almost) non-exisiting federal incentives to encrouage people to start making changes in their own home.

To my surprise I received a fairly detailed and personal response today. Wow - I really did not expect that. No wonder who actually wrote it, but the fact that he (or somebody else) took the time to read my comment and respond almost gave me that warm and fuzzy feeling.

Thanks Mr. Udall!

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That ought to be enough for a while now:

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If you’re still looking for the perfect christmas present for me, look no further: check out the video below (also accessible via this link). That’s what I want for christmas - badly, really badly

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I couldn’t help but laugh out loud when I read on www.spiegel.de (german) today that according to a recent study only 2/3rds of German drivers use their turn signal.

Well send those people who are responsible for the study over here to New Mexico. Make sure they bring the proper medication, because they are in for a big shock: I think we are pretty close to 90% of people NOT using their turn signals. It’s a sign of weakness to use it. It’s used as a coat hanger instead. It wears off if you use it too often.

I’m constantly annoyed when I wait at the T-junction coming down on 592 and somebody approaches from the left. No signal, which means he’s going straight on and I have to wait for him to pass - right? Nope, wrong, at least most of the time.

Ha - 1/3rd - ha - still laughing …

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