even a mouse knows success requires action
a mouse takes action

Is Bill Gates offering big bucks to track your email? On the trail of the most forwarded hoax in Internet history

Ooowwwwwwwwww!!! My knee hurts!!! It's the one I dislocated all those years ago (1978, it was) and later had to have surgically repaired (that was in 1980). It hasn't bothered me in ages, but today it just hurts like crazy. I have no idea why. Maybe I exercised a little too vigorously yesterday, but my exercise device thingy (one of those airwalker deals) is normally really super easy on my joints (which is why I got it to begin with). Possibly I slept with my knee in an uncomfortable or constricted position, or maybe it's the weather (sudden sharp air pressure changes can cause pain, but that has bothered me only rarely since I came to Melbourne).

Basically, I don't know what caused or triggered it. I only know it HURTS.

Mattel must pay nearly $2 million to artist who parodied Barbie; reimbursement for legal fees

I can't decide if I like Titanic or The Shining better....

Andrew always brings the mail in when he comes home and tonight he came in with a new magazine for the National Gallery of Victoria (we're members), a bill from Telstra (for my cable), and then he opened an envelope and said, "Guess what I have here?" and produced.... The Tickets. You know, the ones to see my favorite band of all time (the Eagles, in case you haven't been paying attention). I may have to scan them...

The Gallery magazine, by the way, smells REALLY nice. It's a high-quality glossy magazine and the ink smells wonderful. Mmmmmmm. Andrew thought I was a little loopy, sitting there smelling the pages, but then I flipped them under his nose and he understood...

The Yorkshire graffiti artist known universally as Moose has what he believes is a cast-iron defence against accusations of urban vandalism.

The source of the trouble has been a rather unfathomable message in 3ftletters for Smirnoff's "Lyriquid perfection" campaign, condemned by Gerry Harper, a Leeds councillor, as "sheer vandalism". Moose counters that he should not be prosecuted "for cleaning the walls". But Leeds City Council insists his work is illegal because any advertiser needs a permit. The Crown Prosecution Service says he may have been in breach of last year's Anti-Social Behaviour Act.

Following years of almost weekly security stuff-ups, last month the company back-flipped on a promise to release critical security updates to those it alleges have pirated its PC operating system, the ubiquitous Windows. Microsoft was roundly condemned by security experts for what will, in effect, remove a software "condom" from the internet, laying at risk all users.
 
And then last Friday, websites running Microsoft's Internet Information Server - software that delivers usually corporate web pages to surfers - suffered what may be the company's most embarrassing glitch to date. A "trojan horse" program variously called "Download.Ject'', "Scob'' and "Toofer'' that, like the warriors of Homer's epic who hid inside an innocuous outer shell only to wreak havoc once brought inside, hopped from one site to the next exploiting security lapses in Microsoft software that could lead to theft of confidential information such as credit card details.
 
Anyone visiting a compromised website had everything they typed copied to a computer in Russia, researchers said. The exploit, which Microsoft and independent researchers gave the highest threat-level of "critical", short-circuited most security precautions on both the infected corporate server and on the surfer's PC.

Woohoo! I love this browser. I finally downloaded it to give it a try and it's slicker than snail snot. Mmmm. The interface is uncluttered and there's minimal browser chrome and it's just excellent. I also imported all my Netscape settings (saved passwords, bookmarks, everything!) totally painlessly, and it can import from Opera, Internet Explorer, older versions of Netscape...

This is GOOD. Seriously. Using Internet Explorer is a serious security risk these days and while I expect Microsloth will eventually get around to fixing the lastest security hole, people really shouldn't be using IE if they can avoid it.

Try Firefox if you haven't already. It's slick, it's easy to use, it's got tabbed browsing (yay!), and it's free!

enjoy life
Just take a look
you happy? swirly
funnystuff.
Bed Of Roses
Freedom at last

I don't understand people like you. Well, no. That's not true. Fact is, I do understand, because at one time in my screwed-up, mentally ill and emotionally disordered past, I was just as manipulative as you are, I was just as much of a liar, and I was just as much of a whack job as you appear to be.

You'll probably never fully understand the amount of hurt and damage you've done, but believe me, it will come back to you. What goes around does, indeed, come around. And when it comes around for the stuff you've done, it's going to knock you on your pathetic arse.

I don't personally hold any anger, and believe it or not, I have compassion, because I've been that low and done things just as horrible, but... Well, time will tell, as they say. And what goes around truly does come around. You'll find that out for yourself eventually.

Security researchers warned Web surfers on Thursday to be on guard after uncovering evidence that widespread Web server compromises have turned corporate home pages into points of digital infection.
 
The researchers believe that online organized crime groups are breaking into Web servers and surreptitiously inserting code that takes advantage of two flaws in Internet Explorer that Microsoft has not yet fixed. Those flaws allow the Web server to install a program that takes control of the user's computer.
 
Late Thursday, Microsoft advised customers to increase their browser security to the highest settings, although that could cause some Web site functions to stop working.

This is also, of course, a good reason why you shouldn't run a Microsoft server, since those are the ones getting infected...

*ahem*

crankshaft my circulant commercial column bodied infirm lodge bodleian temple sandpiper flush jubilate childbear motivate removal carburetor set churchgoer dadaist junk senate basel claudio canopy bandpass dinnertime outrageous netherlands conqueror bound peridotite brendan carven kidnapped

Yeah, I'm really going to fall for that and open it...

Dunno how many readers are familiar with the Bryce program. It's a 3D manipulation thingy, you can do weird landscapes in it, but I think it's actually most useful for abstract or surreal stuff. I've seen a lot of crappy Bryce pictures, but I've seen some really good ones, too. It's the same as any tool... in the hands of a talented, creative person who knows what they're doing, it can turn out wonderful things. In the hands of someone with less talent or more limited vision, well, you get glass spheres floating over water with distorted, oddly colored skies in the background.

Anyway, Bryce was a Metacreations program (before that, I think it was actually Fractal Design Corporation, but I can't swear to that). When Metacreations went belly up and sold off all their programs, Bryce and Painter were bought by Corel, along with Kai's Power Tools and Kai's Power Goo and a couple other image manipulation thingies, if I recall correctly. No matter.

Corel has done a pretty good job with Painter, actually, and they're still selling the Kai's Power Tools plugins (although you can't get KPT 3 any more anywhere as far as I can tell). With Bryce however, they did an updated version and then just pretty much allowed the program to languish after that. Eventually they stopped Macintosh support entirely. Bryce users were not happy about the state of the program, which was, basically, not really being further developed. At all. They released Bryce 5 and a couple of update patches and then stopped, and it looked like the End of Bryce...

Turns out that it wasn't the end of Bryce. It has been purchased by DAZ 3D, who are now selling it quite inexpensively (and even cheaper if you're a member of their Platinum Club, which I am).

I'm not entirely sure why they did this or what they hope to accomplish, but I'm not actually inclined to speculate. I was never a big Bryce user to begin with. I had version 3 and I upgraded to version 5 (skipped 4 altogether; I frequently do that sort of thing), and despite buying a rather expensive book on the program, I never really got the hang of it, other than being able to make glass spheres floating over water with a weirdly colored distorted sky.

Still, now that DAZ has it, I'm going to reinstall it and see what I can do with it. I don't know if I'll ever be able to do anything particularly good with the program, but I might be able to use it somewhat less conventionally for making things like 3D rendered gems and jewels and such to make web graphics or clip art or something.

I just haven't got that much to say, really. The midwinter blahs have got a good grip on me, and despite the fact that I'm not really "depressed", I'm pretty darned... blah.

I've mostly been reading forums and working quietly on some behind-the-scenes stuff for the redesign of Alicorna (nothing to show anyone yet; I'm moving the site over to Mambo Open Source, the same code base I used for the elizabyte digital art site).

I just feel all foggy in the head and mostly unable to direct my attention for very long, or to say anything (visually or verbally) that has any particular interest or meaning.

Seasonal Affective Disorder... hooray...

Long time readers will know that The Eagles are my favorite band of all time. The first album I ever bought with my own money was Hotel California. The first adult man I ever looked at and thought, "Yeah, I like that," was Glenn Frey, on the poster that came with the original printing of the Hotel California album (back in the days when vinyl ruled). I have all the Eagles albums, most of their solo albums (even both of Randy Meisner's albums, now how many people can say that or would even admit it in public if they could?). I can name all the people who have been in the band over the years. We're talking a major Eagles fan here, and for all of my adult life.

Well, they're coming to Melbourne in November to perform at the Rod Laver Arena. Tickets went on sale at 9am. They sold out almost immediately. I kinda expected that, really, and was disappointed, but not crushed. Then I heard on the radio that there was a second concert and tickets available, so I called Andrew on the mobile (since I was out of the house at the time) and had him check. Nope. No luck. Damn.

I got kinda irritated about this, actually. They didn't announce a second concert or anything, so how was I supposed to know? Damned stupid marketers or whomever arranges that stuff, mutter mutter, grumble gripe. Well, fine, if they're going to be that way they can just be that way.

Couple hours after I'd given up entirely and was working on other stuff and had moved on, Andrew says to me via ICQ, "Tell me you love me." I said, "I love you." He said, "Good, because I got tickets."

There was a third concert, and he managed to get in on time to get us some okayish but not great seats (hey, I can live with them). He's not even an Eagles fan, although he'll listen to their music without complaining about it (he's not a child of the 70s, you see, and never had feathered hair and never lived in California and he's very, very GenX). He got these tickets for me, his Generation Jones, American, child-of-the-70s wife. Pretty sweet.

A guy went to a travel agent and tried to book a two-week cruise for himself and his girlfriend. The travel agent said that all the ships were booked up and things were very tight, but that he would see what he could do.

A couple of days later, the travel agent phoned and said he could now get them onto a three-day cruise. The guy agreed and went to the drugstore to buy Dramamines and three condoms.

The next day, the agent called back and said that he now could book a five-day cruise. The guy said, "I'll take it," and returned to the same pharmacy to buy two more Dramamines and two more condoms.

The following day, the travel agent called yet again and said he could now book them on an eight-day cruise. The guy agreed, and went back to the drugstore. He asked for three more Dramamine and three more condoms.

The pharmacist looked sympathetically at him and said, "Look, if it makes you sick, why do you keep doing it?"

It's the solstice (the winter one, although I do realize that in the Northern Hemisphere it's the summer one). This is a good thing, because it means that the days will start to get longer. My Seasonal Affective Disorder hasn't actually been TOO awful this year, but I've felt the effects, despite the anti-depressants. I dont feel depressed so much as just unmotivated and vaguely tired (but not actually fatigued, just sort of like I could crawl into bed and stay there for a long time).

In the Northern Hemisphere, my "low point" was usually in late January or early February. Here, it's late July or early August. Since it hasn't been too awful this year, though, I kinda hope it won't take quite as long to get through that icky "The Days Are Too Short, Let's Hybernate!" feeling.

Well, I fooled the Gender Genie. It thought I was male. Mind you, the thing is only right about two thirds of the time, so it's not like it's particularly difficult to fool it...

Then again, it was a pretty small sample, so I went and got some longer ones (my rants, from Rantsome) and it's been doing quite well at figuring out I'm female. Interesting...

is it you, Gloria?
is it really you?
Can you be trusted??
acrimony
antic
Dont let me down

never run out again! divert
Home is where the heart is
I need you here
Take a breather
I Will Still Love You

When the US-led coalition invaded Iraq in March 2003, few would have imagined that the move might lead to the formation of an alliance between the radical Left and hard-line Islamists in Western Europe. But this is precisely what happened.

I just posted my recipe for homemade sage pork sausage at The Red Kitchen. I learned to make my own when I discovered that it's pretty much uniquely American and you can't get it in the stores here in Australia!

Grammy-Winning Crooner Ray Charles Dies

Tomrrow night
Walk nude and be proud of your growth
please bring your lotions
we have the medicine you need
the food of the gods!

I've always believed that spammers are scum. This pretty much confirms it:

Organised criminals based in Russia are fuelling the rise in the amount of spam sent over the Internet, according to a leading opponent of junk mail.
 
Steve Linford, director of The Spamhaus Project, warned on Tuesday that these gangs are supplying US-based spammers with details of compromised PCs that can be used to send out their unsolicited commercial messages, and creating viruses that will create more of these open proxies.
 
"There is a new level of criminality in the spamming world," Linford told the Openwave Messaging Anti-Abuse conference in London. "Russian gangs are creating viruses and proxies and selling them onto US spammers."

I've had a rather rocky few days. Well, more than a few. My medical condition has been giving me trouble. Terrible pain over the weekend, really difficult to cope with, slowly improving throughout the week. Now my pain is pretty managable (not too bad at all, in fact), but I still feel really exhausted, and this morning my body's thermostat was all out of whack and I felt really hot, despite the fact that it's cold and rainy and approaching winter solstice.

Hopefully, this little nasty episode will be done in a day or two. Bleah. I hate it when this happens.

First of all, an Aspie is someone with Asperger's Syndrome, which is regarded as a form of autism. "Aspie" isn't derogatory in any way, it's just a nickname, frequently used with some measure of affection.

I know folks with Asperger's Syndrome. One person who comes to mind right off the top of my head fits the profile so closely it's startling. You probably know people with AS, too, particularly if you work with or around computers (Aspies tend to do well with computers or mechanical things, engineering, architecture, etc.). The biggest thing with Aspies is they've got quite limited social skills, not from lack of trying, but because they really just don't seem to "get it" when it comes to social interaction (another reason they tend to end up working in somewhat solitary things like computer programming).

Andrew's family has a long history of and a number of people with markedly unusual qualities such as autistism-like behavior, "eccentricities" (looking back, it looks very like Asperger's Syndrome; this was discovered by a cousin of Andrew's who has a son with AS), giftedness (yes, giftedness and autism both run in families, no one is sure why), musical giftedness (ditto).

My own daughter, Zoë, is developmentally delayed (speech/language problems) and may be a high-functioning autistic (or she may just be speech delayed; we won't know until she's older and has had more therapy).

And I've studied art history, and even did a special mini-thesis on Michelangelo. What's that got to do with autism or Asperger's Syndrome? Well, apparently...

Renaissance-era artistic genius Michelangelo might have had Asperger's syndrome, a milder form of autism which causes sufferers to have difficulties with social interaction, according to experts on the condition.

Today is an anniversary of two things.

First, it's the anniversary of the day I realized I was in love with Andrew. We'd been friends for a long time, and then, all of a sudden, it hit me like a ton of bricks. "I'm in love with Andrew." Woah. It was exiciting, frightening, thrilling, weird, and a lot of other things.

He didn't feel the same way about me. Well, not for about two weeks, when it suddenly hit him, too. Heh.

Yes, we're still in love. It's mellowed out a great deal, and it doesn't have that constant thrill that you get when you're first in love with someone, but it's certainly still there. And totally beside that, we're friends and we were friends for years before we were in love. Even when we're annoyed with each other or just busy with the basics of life, we're still friends.

The other anniversary is of this weblog. I've been keeping this blog for four years as of today (and at the same URL for the whole time!). Certainly the online archives don't go back that far, but I have them all still, backed up on my hard drive and on CD, just For Posterity™. Mind you, I'm well aware that Posterity may not care at all about my blog entries, but maybe some grandchild might take a vague interest or something. Well, assuming that CDs are still readable media. If not, I don't think the world will have lost anything great.

So, hey, happy Sixth of June.

A lobbyist on his way home from work in Canberra traffic comes to a dead halt in a long line of banked up traffic, and thinks to himself "Wow, this seems worse than usual."

He notices a cop walking between the lines of stopped cars, so he rolls down his window and asks, "Officer, what's the hold-up?"

The cop replies, "The Prime Minister is depressed with the way opinion polls are going, so he stopped his limo and is sitting in the middle of the road threatening to douse himself with petrol and set himself on fire. He says no one believes his stories about why we went to war in Iraq, or the connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda, or that his tax cuts will help anyone except his wealthy friends, or that he won't retire half way through his next term to let Peter Costello in. So we're taking up a collection for him."

The lobbyist asks, "How much have you got so far?"

The officer replies, "About 20 litres, but a lot of people are still siphoning."

let me show you heathen inscrutable
burial
geodetic
inaccessible
What every man should know!

I kept forgetting to mention, but I've been busy doing new pictures. There are several new ones at elizabyte digital art.

I've got really bad "brain fog" today. Ugh. Well, it kinda started yesterday, with all over body pain that made me very cranky, and today I'm not in as much pain, but I've got the foggy brain.

This is typical of the medical condition I almost certainly have (it's not medically confirmed, but it can only be confirmed by ruling out everything else, and that hasn't been done yet, which is why I've never said what, precisely, the condition is).

The problem is, I quit taking magnesium supplements. I'm pretty sure that's what it is. The magnesium helps tremendously and I stopped taking it partly because I ran out and didn't get more when I should have, and partly because I sort of wondered if it was just a placebo thing, or maybe I was imagining the pain, tiredness, foggy brain, etc....

The good news is that I'm not imagining it, and it's good because I always worry about stuff like that (my mother drilled it into my head over and over that I "made up" medical complaints and pain and such, and I'm still kinda paranoid about it, because I always worry that maybe I really am making it up or something). It's also good news because it seems for sure that the magnesium does, indeed, really help.

The bad news is that today I feel pretty crappy, and I did yesterday, as well, and it'll take a few days of taking the magnesium again before I'm up to speed.

Just added these to the random quote generator (incidentally, one of these days I'm going to get Andrew to write me a little script to take all those quotes and put them on one page so people can read them all in one go, but since I don't want it to be dynamic and since he's been horribly busy for ages, it's not done yet).

"It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument." - William McAdoo

"This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel." - Horace Walpole

I have previously commented on the legalese in the emails my brother-in-law occasionally sends from work. I've even reproduced the disclaimer, and he also shared with me the even longer disclaimer from another law firm they do business with (he's not a lawyer, by the way, he's an IT Manager).

Imagine my delight at reading this article deconstructing one of those legalistic disclaimers on emails, this time one from Time, Inc.

I have previously commented on the legalese in the emails my brother-in-law occasionally sends from work. I've even reproduced the disclaimer, and he also shared with me the even longer disclaimer from another law firm they do business with (he's not a lawyer, by the way, he's an IT Manager).

Imagine my delight at reading this article deconstructing one of those legalistic disclaimers on emails, this time one from Time, Inc.