Jim’s Brain Online

Posted by Jim at May 29th, 2006

So, I’ve been feeling a little guilty about neglecting this blog lately. Haven’t been posting anything complicated or interesting. Just the occasional (very short) slice of life or really easy entry about something I’ve known about for years, and today I thought I should do something about that.

So I decided to post a picture of my cat ’cause everyone likes cats. They’re cute, right?

P.S. And in case someone from Cute Overload reads this… Yes, I did discover your site via Slashdot. How’d you know?

P.P.S. In case you’re wondering, the cat is sick and does not like his medication. This picture shows him doing his best to get every last molecule out of his mouth.

Posted by Jim at May 26th, 2006

It appears that the ozone hole may be closing. At any rate, the ozone doesn’t appear to be being depleted any more. They’re not completely sure why, but I’m not complaining.

Posted by Jim at May 25th, 2006

The scene: Kristen and I are getting ready for the day. She is in the shower. I am shaving and not paying attention to much beyond shaving.

The conversation:
Kristen: I just got a shot of cold water.

I continue to shave, adding a little more water to the sink so that I can rinse my razor.

Kristen: It happens every time you do that.
Me: Do what?
Kristen: Turn on the water.
Me: (Pause. Then laughter as I realize the entertainment potential of this)

Kristen: Jim. Don’t be evil.

Of course just turning on the hot water (making the shower cold) is not that evil. True evil would involve both turning on the hot water and flushing the toilet (making the shower hot) at unpredictable moments.

Not that I would do that.

Posted by Jim at May 18th, 2006

Because I haven’t written much this week and have written barely anything about books in a long time, I thought I’d mention Kim Stanley Robinson’s Escape from Kathmandu. I should mention in passing as I do this that Kim Stanley Robinson is one of my favorite science fiction authors and that Escape from Kathmandu is the closest of any of his books to light reading. Ordinarily his books include massive quantities of politics, social questions, and environmentalism.

This one still includes a certain amount of all of the above, but in much smaller doses than usual and he spends much of the time deliberately being funny–and carries it off.

The book is set in Nepal, the country that contains Mt. Everest. The characters are largely US expatriates who live in Nepal, guiding tourists in the Himalayas and climbing mountains in their spare time. The comedy comes from the combination of first world expectations (for example: consistently working utilities, romantic notions about exploration) and third world reality (poverty and bureacracy).

Admittedly, the combination of those elements doesn’t exactly make it sound like a laugh riot.

What makes things work is Kim Stanley Robinson’s sense of absurdity and his ability to create good stories and some wonderful moments. For example:

–the obnoxious tourist who is filming a documentary
–an illegal ascent of Mt. Everest
–the main characters’ attempt to sneak a Yeti past Jimmy Carter
–almost accidentally provoking war between India and China (yes, this was funny)

The book was published in 1989, appearing as novellas in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine before that. Reading the stories now is somewhat bittersweet.

If you follow Nepal at all, you know why. I don’t think that the stories could have the same light tone if they’d been written recently. Between now and then, the Crown Prince gunned down the King, Queen and five others. After that, another member of the family became king, ending the constitutional monarchy and taking all power to himself. In the meantime, a Maoist insurgency began to grow and spread. Relatively recently, the King was stripped of his powers and democracy restored, but things have a long way to go.

Still, if you want to read a funny, contemporary fantasy that includes mountain climbing and yeti, this book is probably your only option. Recent history aside, I recommend it.

Posted by Jim at May 12th, 2006

Not that I expect that anyone’s been wondering about or waiting for this but I ran across a link to a cut scene from Star Wars. It’s one near the beginning with Biggs, Luke’s friend who dies in the assault on the Death Star.

Posted by Jim at May 10th, 2006

Sometime last year, I replaced the email addresses on a client’s site with an online form. The idea was that the online form would slow the ongoing barrage of spam. I don’t know whether it was successful at this, but I’m sure that at least a few less spambots collected their email addresses.

Amusingly, this form has been my window into how higher visibility sites can attract form misuse, abuse and associated hassle. I wrote last year about discovering the existence of email injection.

Having covered misuse and abuse in that post, I write now about “associated hassle.” Since email injection became better known, the larger hosting providers like Network Solutions have attacked the problem in structural ways. For example, Network Solutions along with other organizations no longer allows email addresses outside of the web site’s domain to be listed in the “from” field.

What this means on a practical level is that if someone hijacks your form and starts sending spam through it, listing an email address that might actually reach them (i.e. not one of yours), that spam will never get through. Unfortunately it also means that if you wanted to put a legitimate form user’s email address in the “from” field, allowing your client to contact them by pressing “reply” to the email they just recieved, well… that won’t work either.

Naturally, larger web hosting organizations cannot be bothered to notify their clients of this sort of change. Thus, late last week we started getting “mail returned” from the form. This was good in that we at least got the mail, but bad in that it wasn’t going the person who needed it. It was going to me.

Specifically, the returned emails included the information that our server’s ip address had been put on the CBL. The CBL’s pages include a number of reasons why you might be on their list. Many of them had to do with server configuration. Others had to do with software that we aren’t running. In short, they were little help at all.

Knowing that I couldn’t do anything about the server’s configuration, I called someone who could. Network Solutions generally has good technical support, but somehow I ended up talking to someone who didn’t know what was going on the first time I called. The second time, I was forwarded to someone who explained the situation.

I pass it on to you in the hope that you don’t need to know it, but the suspicion that you might someday.

Posted by Jim at May 6th, 2006

As ever, GRACE held Hunger Walk today, the first Saturday in May. As I have the last few years, I took pictures of the event. Once upon a time, the Hunger Walk was the only walk in Grand Rapids. That was 20 years ago. Now it’s one of many.

We crossed the route of one walk and went down different sides of the same street as another. I know I nearly went the wrong way at one point. I don’t know about other people.

Anyway, take a look at the pictures. I can’t say that they’re brilliant but they’re okay.

Posted by Jim at May 4th, 2006

You may have read something by now about putting mentos in Diet Coke and having the Coke squirt out of the bottle. Fortunately for all of us Rob Malda (alias CmdrTaco of Slashdot) has tried it and videotaped it.

Incidentally he’s not alone in this. This one in particular should win some kind of award for greatest height achieved with this one as a close runner up.

This page, for example, attempts to use it in a classroom setting. Oh. Also NPR seems to have gotten into the act.

So, if anyone’s got Mentos, Diet Coke and some time Friday night, I’ve got a driveway…