Okay, I was inspired by a little challege in a graphic and design group to which I belong, and I got out one of my many cemetery photos, filtered and tortured and tweaked it, and made it into wallpaper, and it's now available on the free wallpaper page that is part of my picture gallery. It's the bottom one, Dark Cemetery. Have a haunted Hallowed Evening, (although it's spring here, so it's just not the same).

I had to go back to the doctor about my toe. The icky growth that I had on the toe (the granuloma) from the ingrown part still hasn't gone away, and, even more disturbing, the entire toenail is quite noticibly yellow.

Turns out that the toenail now has a fungal infection in it, and I'm going to have to take antibiotics for six months or more, and while on these antibiotics I can't drink alcohol (not that I drink a lot as it is, but still) and I have to be extra careful in the sun because it'll make me more susceptible to sunburn. Oh, and I have to be SURE to take my medication every single day, because missing even a couple of days can blow the whole regimine and it won't work.

For the granuloma, I've got an anti-inflammatory ointment, and every night I've got to soak my foot in salt water or water with epsom salt (which I prefer, anyway), and then carefully dry the foot and icky growth and put on some of the ointment to help the thing go away.

And if this doesn't work (I have to go back to the doctor in three months to get it checked out), I'm going to have to have my entire toenail surgically removed.

So, hey, you know, when I get an ingrown toenail, I really make a production of it!

It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.
 
Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.

I am somehow reminded of a line from Star Trek IV: Save the Whales (okay, okay, it's really Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, but I like my title better).

Gillian: You're not from the military are you? Trying to teach whales to retrieve torpedoes or some dipshit stuff like that?

You're David Johansen, the lead singer of the New
York Dolls. You are a sexy bitch who growls
like a werewolf but can swagger better than
Jagger.. You're confident, hipper than
everyone, and you know it. You're not afraid to
wear women's clothes because you're a real man.
No one is cooler than you, you tart.
Watch out for ugly facial hair in the
future...alright?


Which rad old school 70's glam icon are you? (with pics)
brought to you by Quizilla

I keep getting emails advertising a particular php type site (that is, they have scripts and other php-related materials on the site). And when I say I keep getting them, I mean sometimes to the tune of several a day, but at least once a week.

When I first started getting them I checked the email to see what it was about, but I don't recognize the site and I certainly never asked to be spammed with email telling me to visit it.

The thing that ticks me off the most is that every email from these idiots insists that it's not spam. Is it unsolicited? Is it commercial? Is it in my spamtrap? Well, hey, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck....

They say, in the body of the message, that they obtained my email address "from legitimate sources" whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. Not that I joined an opt-in list, not that I signed up for their site, nothing of that sort, but that they got it from "legitimate sources".

Well, I won't say what site it is because there's no way I'm going to give them any traffic, but they really need to stop sending me this crap if they want me to stop reporting it for what it is: SPAM.

Well, in recent months, I've found that I have to take my glasses off in order to read. This is because I'm getting old, of course, right at that age when you start to need reading glasses. I'm also told that using a computer a lot will make your eyes go funny a little quicker, but I dunno...

Anyway, I got my eyes checked today and it seems that my distance prescription hasn't changed very much (just slightly in one eye) and I need computer glasses (or reading ones, more on that in a minute). Our insurance covers up to a certain amount per year, and as this year's almost over, I'll be getting a pair this year (which I ordered today) and a pair of distance glasses next year.

I was initially going to get bifocal glasses which are good for reading (bottom half) and mid-range (for the computer), and that's what I ordered initially. Then, they called me and said that the manager reviewed the order and thought that since I work at the computer a lot, the bifocal glasses probably wouldn't work well for me, so they were going to order me standard lenses (with a mid-range focal point) but they recommended multi-coating (which has a lot of anti-glare and other good things), which I thought was a good idea (I've got it on my distance glasses). All in all, I'll get back almost fifty dollars due to the change.

Good service, I'd say.

So anyway, now I'll have to get one of those chains you dangle your glasses from, heheh.

Oh, come on, you knew it was coming. I've got a new camera, naturally I had to go take some pictures....

As it happens, we had occasion to go into the city today, so that's what I took pictures of. Look in the Melbourne section of the gallery (look on the last couple of pages; new photos get added to the end).

The new squad will divert eight agents, a supervisor and assorted support staff to gather evidence against "manufacturers and purveyors" of pornography -- not the kind exploiting children, but the kind that depicts, and is marketed to, consenting adults.
 
"I guess this means we've won the war on terror," said one exasperated FBI agent, speaking on the condition of anonymity because poking fun at headquarters is not regarded as career-enhancing. "We must not need any more resources for espionage.

"Cursing, they say, is a human universal. Every language, dialect or patois ever studied, living or dead, spoken by millions or by a small tribe, turns out to have its share of forbidden speech, some variant on comedian George Carlin's famous list of the seven dirty words that are not supposed to be uttered on radio or television.

There are a bunch of new photos of Zoë and Miranda in their gallery. C'mon, you didn't think I'd have a new camera and no new pictures of my kids, didja? (Oh, and yes, Zoë currently has very short hair; she decided to give herself a haircut a few weeks back and the only thing for it was to cut the rest to match, unfortunately, but, hey, hair grows back...)

Vernal (spring) equinox for us here in the Southern Hemisphere, autumnal equinox in the more populated hemisphere, but equinox nonetheless.

Yay for spring!

I need a polarizing filter (circular, so it doesn't interfere with the focus finder thingy), some macro filters (anyone who has seen my gallery surely knows how much I love to take close pictures of flowers), maybe a slave flash (sounds kinky, doesn't it, but it's actually just an additional flash that you add on and which is "slaved" to the primary flash and goes off at the same time), a decent tripod, and, oh, maybe, when I've got lots of spare money around (like that's ever likely to happen, but I can dream) a wide-angle lens and maybe an additional telephoto lens....

I think I'll start with the polarizer. They're pretty inexpensive and we're going on a holiday soon, and I'll be taking lots of landscape type pictures, so it'd come in handy...

Mysterious People is a really intriguing and interesting site, and a wonderful time-waster. I've just spent a couple hours perusing the stories there, and there's still lots more I haven't gotten to...

I found Diary of a Webcam Girl pretty interesting. It's not x-rated or anything, although it does deal with her job. Anyway, I thought it was an interesting read, and thought some of my readers might, too.

(And in case anyone is wondering, hell will have icicles before you see Bonni using her webcam for anything other than boring the crap out of people and chatting online with a few selected friends, heh.)

I've got a new camera. It's my usual sort of higher end consumer type camera (as opposed to a genuinely professional level camera), and I did extensive research before choosing this one. It's a Kodak, which I'm partial to, although I did research other cameras in the same general price range and with similar capabilities.

It's a Kodak Z740, and it's got some amazing zoom capabilities. Haven't tried the macros or other nifty extras yet, but so far I'm quite impressed with it. And despite the fact that it can some with a dock, it doesn't HAVE to (I've got enough space taken up on my desk already, thanks) and it can use a nifty variety of different power sources, different kinds of batteries, etc. (which was, for me, one of the selling points).

It's last year's model, but since when do I buy cutting edge technology, anyway? I much prefer getting something that's a bit older and which has a lot of reviews and a good "track record" behind it, and which, because it's not cutting edge, is priced reasonably (and I got a very nice deal on this camera and the extra memory card I got for it, heh, eBay is good).

Now I'm off to explore the Kodak site to see about getting some tips and other information on using this nifty little camera (and it is quite small, MUCH lighter than my Kodak DC3400). If I can think of anything to take pictures of (other than my kids), I may post a few, but that remains to be seen. There's not much in the way of flowers out at the moment, and other than flowers or grass or the kids, there's not a great deal to take photos of around the place we live, other than other people's houses...

Arrgh, matey, September 19 is Talk Like a Pirate Day! Arrrgh, try it, matey, it's fun! Arrrgghh!

It’s a sad day and a good day. For years I’ve held onto my IE install out of love. I worked on IE 1.0 thru 5.0, and was one of the people that designed much of its UI. But my love for the past has faded. Last week I switched to Firefox: and I’ve been happy.
 
Why I switched...

Got my webcam today. It's a little cheap thing, manufactured somewhere in Asia (Hong Kong, maybe). The name of it (in system listings and such) shows up in weird symbols since I haven't got the appropriate Asian language alphabet installed, whatever it may be.

I also had to fix the thing to my monitor with Blu Tack (you know, that gummy blue stuff you use to hang posters).

However, it does work, and I had a blast today talking for a few hours to someone I haven't seen in a long time, and the little girls were nuts for the thing and were playing peekabo and waving and such. I'm going to try to get a couple of small movies of them (.avi, since that's what the software captures) and put them in their gallery or something. Zoë mugging for the camera was hilarious!

So there you go. A cheap web camera can make many people happy, particularly if they're geeky people.

Stuff devil dolls, second-hand breast implants and bare knuckle-fight DVDs, this has to be the tastiest auction on eBay for months: your chance to acquire a dead horse at a knock-down price.

Go to Google, type the word failure in the search field, and then hit the "I feel lucky" button.

There is yet ANOTHER new exploit out there that the idiot spammers have figured out to use.

This is pretty obscure and fairly recent. For nine years (since Andrew first wrote that script for me in 1996) that mailform and things based on it (such as the graphic set registration which isn't online any more and the other download registration one) was very secure. Leave it to the spammers to figure out how to screw with people's servers to spew forth their garbage....

It is mostly unlikely that people have worked out how to hack that script, BUT it's possible, so if you're using it or any variation of it, please go to Alicorna and get the new one and install that one instead.

He hasn't (yet) updated the Graphics Download script, but I'll let you know when he does. It's not online at the moment, but I'll put it online when it's updated so people can get it easily.

For now, if you're using the mailform go here and download the updated version just to be on the safe side.

No registration required, just download and off you go.

I swear, spammers really are the absolute scum of the earth.

I have no clue how it happened or how long it's been a problem, but my mail handler cgi script seems to have just disappeared from the server, making it impossible to contact me via the mailforms on this domain.

And now that I've restored the mail handler script, I'm finding that none of the stinking mailforms on the entire server are working, even cross-domain. Obviously, there's something weird with sendmail or something, so I'll have to get Andrew to fix it.

This is extremely annoying, to say the least. I'm being very polite in this little message, but inside I'm swearing enough to make a Marine blush.

[EDIT] It appears to now be fixed. Whew. Talk about annoying. I won't go into details as to what was causing it to not work (because I don't entirely know, heh), but it was partly to do with the fact that we have to run our web server inside a chroot jail because of the amount of utter a$$holes out there who can't keep their damned hands off other people's servers...

Gynaecologist Dr Thomas Gent said: "We believe that she conceived due to the G force of the rollercoaster ride."

I have no clue how it happened or how long it's been a problem, but my mail handler cgi script seems to have just disappeared from the server, making it impossible to contact me via the mailforms on this domain.

And now that I've restored the mail handler script, I'm finding that none of the stinking mailforms on the entire server are working, even cross-domain. Obviously, there's something weird with sendmail or something, so I'll have to get Andrew to fix it.

This is extremely annoying, to say the least. I'm being very polite in this little message, but inside I'm swearing enough to make a Marine blush.

Looks like I picked up a gig teaching web design. It's an online course and I'll mostly be answering questions and doing critiques, and writing some student evaluations.

I give out advice on web design for free, so it'll be nice to get paid for it (and, of course, when you pay for it, you get my commitment to answer, unlike other times when I answer if it pleases me and ignore it if it doesn't.

The pay's not huge or anything, but it's a nice sum and heaven knows, I'm always happy to make money doing stuff I'd be doing anyway!

Television news screen shot captures President Bush with an inadvertently humorous caption.

I just bought a webcam. I've never had any use for one before now, so I never got one, but someone I like to talk to via IM asked about it, and I've seen other people's webcam pics while chatting, so I thought, "Hey, why not?" and got one from eBay. Should be here in a week or so, I'd imagine.

A new Trojan horse displays a message from the Muslim holy book when a user visits what could be a pornographic Web site.

Louisiana officials are stumped. Do officials in our Office of Homeland Security owe the federal government more than 30 million dollars? The feds sent the bill Wednesday for money paid out in the form of grants for a federal flood buyout program. Three former Louisiana Homeland Security employees who oversaw the program are currently under federal indictment.

n the chaos that was Causeway Boulevard, this group of evacuees stood out: a 6-year-old boy walking down the road, holding a 5-month-old, surrounded by five toddlers who followed him around as if he were their leader.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer vowed to "kill" Google in an expletitive-laced, chair-throwing tirade when a senior engineer told him he was leaving the company to go work for Google, the engineer claimed in court documents made public on Friday.

With no enemy to blame for Katrina, the President has been left floundering, writes Felipe Fernandez-Armesto.

Trenise Williams and her fiance were going to be married in New Orleans just hours before Hurricane Katrina unleashed catastrophic damage on the Gulf Coast.
[...]
On Saturday, the couple were married.
 
As children played and weary survivors slept, Williams and Kirsh exchanged vows before an Episcopalian minister and a crowd seated in folding chairs. Some snapped photos with instant cameras, while others used camera phones to capture the moment.

The world has watched amazed as the planet's only superpower struggles with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, with some saying the chaos has exposed flaws and deep divisions in American society.

You'll note I haven't commented on Hurricane Katrina and the horrific damage wrought along the Gulf Coast. This is not because I'm not paying attention, or that I don't care. Quite the contrary. Fact is, I'm deeply and profoundly disturbed by the news reports I'm seeing, just as I was by the war in Iraq, just as I was after the WTC bombings.

I love New Orleans, it's a marvellous, almost enchanted place. Or it was... The historian in me weeps for the loss of so many historical buildings and other irreplacable treasures. The humanitarian in me weeps for the hundreds of thousands who have lost their homes, for the families of those who have lost their lives, for the survivors who are victims of looting and crime and other horrors.

It hits me on many levels, and if I dwell on it too much, I start to feel very sick and dizzy (and I mean that quite literally). I probably won't be writing any more about it because it is so horrifying to me, and if I dwell on it, I find it hard to function fully, so significant is the grief.

Just know that even if I don't write, I am watching, listening, praying, and hoping.

Wow, I can't believe you're so old! Happy birthday, and many happy returns of the day.