Geek Practitioners Blog

I came over here to update the blogroll and noticed a funny thing:

Someone was able to hack WordPress in a way that gave them access to the blogroll. No idea when it happened, but the links all redirected through this WordPress blog using a trailing structure in the form of:

?q=cash-loans

At the end of the URL to which I linked. Not sure offhand what the ?q is and how it differs from the ?s format used to return search results. It did the job, anyway, redirecting to an entirely different location. I suspect the blog in question was also victimized and had no active role.

The lesson? This is probably why there have been security-related updates to WordPress that I should have installed periodically. I’m pretty sure none of the WP blogs in our “empire” are fully updated except the newest one. Oops.

The other lesson? If I posted here regularly as I really do plan to, I would notice these things promptly, limiting any benefit accruing from the linkage.

Now multiple WordPress updates are on my list of things that must be done sooner rather than later.

I have updated my resume page. Eliminated beta and scratch stuff and added a link to the current blogging resume in Word format.

Perhaps I’ll get around to posting other stuff here one of these days…

Web Worker Daily remains a source of great content, but I hate their new design enough that I’m not sure I can call it my favorite anymore. Not only does it not fit the name neatly as the old design did, but as is so common, the featured content panel across the top feels like an obstruction getting in the way of my perusal of the posts.

I got over the redesign of Ars Technica that I disliked almost as much, but in their case the content has also slipped a bit since.

I also like to check out The Register, which for me predates almost everything I read online, and ZDNet Tech Blogs daily. Once in a while I also peruse ITtoolbox Blogs. Everything else is on a no more than once a week basis.

You would never know it by the Middleboro PTA’s current online calendar, but there will be a craft fair this Saturday, December 1st, at the Burkland School cafeteria. The school is on Mayflower Avenue, which is right off the main drag of route 105, near the lights at route 28. SouthCoastToday.com actually does have mention of it buried here:

HOLLY DAYS CRAFT FAIR: Sponsored by the Middleboro Elementary P.T.A., 9 a.m.-2 p.m., Burkland School cafeteria. Proceeds from the fair and sales of the ornaments made by the children will be used to purchase books for the elementary schools libraries.

Deb will be in it, so if you’re local enough, you should go buy stuff from her there. Heck, you might see stuff you like at one of the other tables too. The proceeds they mention above are the table fees. We’d love to make back the table fee (which is an amusing term given that you have to supply your own table), though that shouldn’t be that hard.

If you’re not local, now is the time for Christmas shopping online. Deb has created the coolest snowmen to put in the shop, including so far Kris K. Snowperson and Monica Snowperson, with more to come. Including Jeremy Snowperson, who came to life while I was typing this post.

Bookmarks make great little gifts. So do her popular coasters. There are also dishcloths and towels, facecloths, creatures and aliens in addition to the snowpeople, coin purses and card wallets, and you can make a gift card extra special by using a gift card cozy (holder).

Deb has made a pile of awesome stuff you won’t see in the online shop unless it doesn’t sell in the fair, after which it will filter onto the site. Some of what is currently in the shop may be available at the fair.

It’s worth remembering that Deb does custom orders or variants on existing products. For instance, this tic-tac-toe game was inspired by the original. This drawstring pouch was inspired by this blue drawstring pouch and this small rainbow drawstring pouch. This custom set of eight coasters was inspired by other coasters done in sets of four. I know I’m showing you a lot of sold items, but they are great examples of what is possible.

So if you are in the area Saturday, come on by the fair and see some of Deb’s cool stuff in person, but otherwise check it out online.

Crossposted from Blogblivion.

Hi Jay. You said okay to a test.

This is a test post from a Blackberry.

I hooked our new scanner/printer/copier/fax up today. It was delightful to be able to locate the fact that installation files were available for Windows Vista and download them from the company painlessly. The CD said everything through XP, so I was mildly concerned, but they’re working through their product line and released this one way back in March.

Apart from the fact that we have kids and limited space, it was pretty smooth. I hooked it to the Vista machine because that was where the device would fit in the room. I still haven’t setup the fax part, or programmed the date, but I’ve done so on similar machines for other people and it should be no big deal.

I made a color photocopy of Sadie’s drawing that included an apparent intentional stegasaurus in one corner, and Deb didn’t realize I was showing her the copy when I took the two of them to her with the copy on top.

This should be handy. I can start scanning in old photos I don’t want to lose, for instance. I can make printouts, even if low quality, of pictures of the kids to give the relative heathens who aren’t online.

I also have projects in mind like scanning in old handouts and training materials some of us created for VB support way back when.

The latest edition of Carnival of the Capitalists is over at Welcome to Help, despite not being quite ready for primetime.

I fired up the Vista machine again, after a couple days off from it. My plan was to see how well it did playing a DVD out of the box. The answer: Excellent. I played a couple segments from Serenity. It would be perfectly viable, if I wanted to watch something nobody else did, for me to watch it at the computer, with a headset or in a closed room to avoid sound overlap. Since the sound quality of the machine is amazing for having $5 cheapo speakers, all the better.

It finally prompted me to activate, then disappeared the prompt. In XP you could easily locate a shortcut to bring up the activation screen. In Vista, as far as I could tell there was none. I typed “activate” and searched in the help center, and the third item listed in the results was that activation link. Had I not gone looking, apparently I would have had to wait another week for it to prompt me again, and would have had to try not to let it get away. Beyond that, it was completely uneventful.

I had realized I could now create DVD collections of pictures and, aha!, all the movie clips I’ve taken, from the 30 second ones with no sound on the original camera, to the ones that can be hundreds of megabytes on the new camera. Even better if I could edit them as needed. But wait!

The new camera make Quicktime movie files. I would have to get those out of that format.

Any opinions on video converters? Or editors for that matter? I can try this or that, but thought I’d see if anyone who has used any might have opinions.

I also had to install Quicktime even to play the videos on the Vista machine. When I double-clicked and there was no association, I used the “look on the internet” option for the first time ever and was impressed that it came right up to a screen for downoading either Quicktime or the Quicktime and iTunes combo. Since I’d planned to install iTunes, I went with the latter. Which went fine, but what a pain, all the screens you have to answer to install and then run it the first time.

Anywho, I came back to the old computer to post this, emphasis on the video conversion question, and to check the settings for newsgroups from Verizon, so I can add that in Windows Mail.

And in the process of showing Wayne Vista and geeking out some more, I noticed that in DOS the hidden folders that can’t be accessed and are in some cases obviously for backward compatibility are labeled [JUNCTION] instead of [DIR]. They are NTFS junction points, which act like folders (or files) but are pointers to other folders (or files). Also, I had set Explorer to show hidden files and folders, but for some reason that didn’t cascade to the user profile folder, so explicitly turning that on made the hidden stuff visible even from Vista in Explorer.

There is a switch for DIR that shows just junctions, so using /AL and /S redirected to a text file with > will give you a list of all of them on the machine.

There’s also a DOS command, MKLINK, for creating junctions. Who knew.

It’s NTFS security that makes the junctions inaccessible. They don’t need to be; they’re shortcuts to something you can get at elsewhere.

Very cool.