When an eBay user posts an auction, eBay allows SCRIPT tags to be included in the auction description. This creates a cross-site scripting vulnerability in the eBay website. [...] An attacker may be able to obtain sensitive data from the eBay web site.

Please read. This is a pretty serious issue, and the warning was issued by The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, so it's the real deal.

Caught this on my webcam. It's me headbanging to Green Day.

Why is Weird Al my hero?

1) He's a geek. He was studying at CalPolyTech (one of those California Polytechnical places, you know, geek schools) when he had his first big hit, which was a parody of "My Sharona"

2) He's really smart.

3) He's really funny.

4) Did I mention that he's a geek?

6) His new album has a parody of one of my recent favorites, "American Idiot" (a song which I understand wasn't a big hit in the United States, though it was a hit everywhere else in the world, hmm, strange about that). The parody is "Canadian Idiot" and while I haven't heard it, I had a read of the lyrics and they're hilarious, with a nice, sharp, little gotcha kind of satire punchline at the end

7) Oh, and he's the premier accordian player in rock music today. How could any woman turn up her nose at a smart, funny, geek playing the accordian?

8) He's got a MySpace page, and I definitely suggest giving a listen to "White & Nerdy" while you're there (and, hey, "Don't Download This Song" is pretty amusing, too...)

So I got myself a new pair of ugg boots (note: NOT UGG Australia(tm) as peddled by Decker's and manufactured in China, and please note that NOBODY owns a trademark on the phrase "ugg boots" or "ugh boots" or anything similar in Australia).

These are proper sheepskin, lined with wool, reinforced toe and heel. Sheepskin is naturally water resistant, but I gave them a good coat of water repellant anyway, just to be on the safe side.

And I have to tell you, these are the MOST comfortable boots/shoes I've ever worn. I'm totally blown away. And I'm told that they actually adapt to your feet/legs so they become kind of a custom fit, so it's going to get BETTER. WOW!

In case you're interested, I got them from Snug Australia, who are based right here in Melbourne (and they ship internationally). Great boots, well worth the price, AND they're real uggs made by real Australians and not some random junk made in China and owned by Americans and pretending to be Aussie.

So, last night I dreamed about RSS feeds. Seriously. This happens when I'm trying to learn something new, I dream about it. I used to dream in HTML, in commands for a particular interactive chat program I used to spend a lot of time in, I used to dream in CSS, I seem to recall dreaming in SSI at least once...

So, why did I wait so long to learn about RSS and how incredibly useful it is, hmmm? I always do this. I put off learning CSS for ages and when I finally started to learn it I was astounded by how good it is, and how much better it makes, well, everything. And then I learned about SSI and the combination of SSI and CSS make it so I can change an entire site design in a matter of moments, provided I set it up properly to begin with. And now, because I didn't have enough TLAs (three letter acronyms) in my life already, I'm doing the RSS thing.

HTML, of course, is an ETLA (extended three letter acronym), as is HTTP. URL and URI, of course, are standard TLAs.

WTF? I think I'd better GTB (go to bed). I'm suffering from acronym overdose...

Well, I did some redesigning on the Uncommon Touch site. I'm actually quite pleased with the way it turned out. I'm using a couple of third-party tools to accomplish things, which actually beats doing it all myself. There are now two different RSS feeds there, one for items that are listed, the other for news and notes. I just thought it was a better way to organize things.

Anyway, go have a look if you're interested in webdev and geeky stuff.

The war in Iraq has become the primary recruitment vehicle for violent Islamic extremists, motivating a new generation of potential terrorists around the world whose numbers are increasing faster than the United States and its allies are eliminating the threat, U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded.

Happy to report that putting in CAPTCHAs on my mailforms seems to have stopped the flow of automated spam through them. HOORAY!

In case you're interested, the third-party service I'm currently using is ProtectWebForm.com.

Eventually, we'll install the PERL module that generates CAPTCHAs locally, but this is a great solution for the time being, and a really great service.

Yay! I think I've worked out how to improve the quality of the .jpgs that my webcam turns out. I had it on 100% quality already, but was still seeing a lot of icky compression damage (yuck). Finally fiddled with the settings and have taken off the progressive encoding (which normally shouldn't negatively affect the image that much, but...). The images are much better now.

No, there's no point in me posting this.

Well, okay. At the time of this writing, there's no background image (you know, the orange bits on the sides and the unicorn-woman figure who looks strangely familiar). I updated the image a bit, and now, for some weird reason, I can't upload the graphic. My FTP program just poops out... I've tried a few things and can't figure out what the problem is, and it's late, and I'm tired, so I'm going to bed. I'll fix it tomorrow. Until then, you can cope with the lack of a background image, I think.

[EDIT] Fixed now. No idea what the problem was, but I got the upload to work and it's there now.

Because spammers are complete bastards who can't just keep their filth to themselves, I'm slowly adding CAPTCHAs to my mailforms. Right now, the main form for this domain and the one for this blog now have them. They're not, I'm sorry to say, accessible to the visually impaired, but I may be able to work around that at some point (the third-party CAPTCHA service I'm using does have them, but I can't work out how to put them in; I'll get Andrew to muck with it and see if he can figure it out).

So, anyway, if you don't have my email address, you'll have to do the CAPTCHA to mail me through the mailforms. Sorry about that, but, you know, spammers are complete scum. (If you don't have my email address and want it, I'm happy to tell people what it is, it's not actually a secret: bonni at spamcop dot net and you need to obviously format that into a proper email address, and yes, it is super highly filtered for spam, heh).

Well, I've got a new and improved RSS feed set up now. It's a lot easier to subscribe to it now, IMHO. I'm using a third party service to manage it along with some of my other RSS feeds, so there you go. If you're subscribed to the old one, you can still do that (it should still get rebuilt automatically), but you might want to have a look at the new one, anyway.

The allied Clean Up Ebay (CUE) campaign aimed to report as many ‘bad listings’ as possible. It is this aspect of the protest CORE can now report some alarming findings. A spokesperson for the group said: “We reported numerous ‘bad listings’ to Ebay during CUE. Apart from the usual fee avoidance and general scams, we also found evidence of hijacked accounts and listings of counterfeit goods. In most cases it took up to 24 hours to remove offending items, if this happened at all. This demonstrates what we see as the woeful inadequacy of eBay’s ability to police their site effectively. In too many instances reported bad listings were not removed at all, and quite often, the ones that were removed reappeared within an hour.

You can read the story for yourself, as there are some amusing comments below it, but really, the title is what made me laugh... and laugh.... and laugh....

Okay, I got a haircut. I've been thinking about it for a while. The long layered hair was fun for a while, and it was kinda cool wearing the same haircut I had when I was 14 (which is now back in style, thankyou), but I'm over it. When I was a teenager, I was a lot more willing to spend a lot of time and energy mucking around with my hair (hot rollers, curling irons, hairspray, yadda yadda yadda).

So I got it cut. I was going for a tapered bob, which is pretty much what I got, but now that I look at it and play with it a bit, it reminds me a great deal of Dorothy Hamill and her famous wedge haircut, which is one of the few trendy 70s haircuts that I didn't have.

And, yes, I'm showing both my age and my original nationality by knowing who Dorothy Hammill is and what her haircut looked like...

Avast, me hearties! September 19th is International Talk Like A Pirate Day! Arrgh!

I highly recommend getting some your eggs out of the eBay basket as soon as possible. I hear more and more about good sellers being drilled by eBay rules. Below is an example of what can happen to PowerSeller's that rely too much on the eBay model...

[Personally, I could NOT agree more with the above statement; do go and read the article, too!]

And while we're on the subject of FeeBay:

Over 50% of Sellers Plan to Leave eBay Within 6 Months (Some of us have already gone, too.)

Note that the name of the image is actually "haha-dork-i-bet-your-dogs-name-is-ipod.jpg", but that's not actually the joke (the joke make me both laugh and cringe; you'll see why).

Okay, I can be snarky, no question about that. And I can be (and frequently am) sarcastic, as well. I can also be quite oppositional when I'm in the mood to be contrary.

That being said, I generally do NOT single people out in a forum or other such situation just to target them and attack them every time they post something.

Not sure, then, why I seem to attract that sort of "forum stalker"...

Continue reading "There's always one...."…

THANK you so much for reporting on what's really going on with eBay Australia, rather than just regurgitating the tired old spin the company has been sending out about improving buyer experience. And thank you for mentioning OZtion.

[Note: The above comment is mine; they published it. Not that it's the first time I've been published, but still. It's always nice to see that what I say has some merit.]

Nobody ever tags me with these things, but that's okay. I'll steal 'em when I find 'em interesting. Heh.

One book that changed my life

Okay, this is corny, corny, corny, but the Bible. And it changed my life only when I actually sat down and read it for myself, and stopped paying attention to what other people claimed was in it, what they claimed it meant, etc. There's a great deal of incredibly interesting stuff in there, and they just don't tell you about it in organized churches (at least, none of the churches I ever went to).

One book that you’ve read more than once

Jude Devereaux, A Knight in Shining Armor. Best time-travel romance novel EVER. Fantastic characters, the story is perfect, the research is fantastic, and you're really transported by it. I recommend it to anyone and everyone, even people who don't think they like romance novels. It's a great story.

One book you’d want on a desert island

Well... probably the Bible, but that's actually cheating because it's a whole bunch of books (and letters). But it's very lengthy and you could read it for the whole of your life and always keep finding interesting stuff in it. Then again, this is also true of, say, the Encylopedia Brittanica.

One book that made you laugh

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

One book that made you cry

Little Women

One book you wish you had written

A Knight in Shining Armor (or I'd like to be able to write books that are that good, anyway)

One book you wish had never been written

Dare I type it? The world could have done without The Da Vinci Code (although I admit, I did very much enjoy Angels and Demons by the same author).

One book you’re currently reading

Not reading anything just at this precise moment, but I did just finish The Devil Wears Prada.

One book you’ve been meaning to read

*groan* I've got a lot of books I've been meaning to read, unfortunately. But to pick just one.... A Woman of Substance by Barbara Taylor Bradford.

unbelievable
fortune
are you still apprehensive?
maybe
You'll need this
searching
straggle
marginal
and fell asleep without
regret

"The Fairy Folk and She" was printed earlier this year by PublishAmerica.
 
Basically, it's a fantasy novel about a girl whose mother happens to be "The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe."
 
The concept came to Grosse Ivie in a daydream.
 
"I was thinking of that nursery rhyme and thought she couldn't have been that bad. So I just ran with the story from there," said Grosse Ivie, who now lives in Shingletown.
 
So far, she has had great reviews, from her 9-year-old nephew to colleagues.
 
"People think of fairy tales or nursery rhymes as only open to girls of a younger age, but they shouldn't," she said.

(I know Mary-Anne, and I'm just so very proud of her. Not only is she a great writer she's a really lovely person. Go, buy her book, so she'll be encouraged to write more. The world needs more great writers!)

Okay, the "Town Hall Meeting" wasn't particularly enlightening, to say the least, but check out some of the comments after the blog entry.

Particularly, the one by "hulamermaid". A couple of exerpts from that one:

Investors will soon be hit with scores of lawsuits filed by business owners whose eBay enterprises have been closed down by the corporation’s Keystone Cops. Some of those lawsuits will be tried and won or settled; all at the expense of shareholders.

The FTC is now receiving consumer-complaints that will likely ultimately result in the largest punitive findings in the history of online-commerce, against eBay. Bill and Meg’s branding of honest sellers as criminals is not going to be viewed kindly by Federal investigators; it will be seen as a mere smokescreen designed to obfuscate the truth about what has now become little more than a Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization. Under current leadership, eBay can only “make its numbers” if the criminals are allowed to work their “listing magic” on the site.
[...]
eBay has continued and stepped-up its longstanding policy of retaliating against dissident sellers on the site. People who post negative comments on eBay forums – even under “posting Ids” - are being targeted for elimination from the site. Soon, the mainstream media will be reporting this outrage, and the nitwits at “Trust & Safety” who have “just followed orders” will be forced to explain exactly who gave those orders. The T&S employees should remember that they are acting as agents of eBay, and that when the lawsuits begin to flood the plains, those employees will not be immune from the consequences. Will Meg and Bill defend those employees, or will they cut them loose and claim the employees were “over-zealous renegades?” Honest employees being told to do things that they know are wrong, should begin documenting their receipt of “instructions.”

Buddy and Bill were a couple of drinking buddies who worked as aircraft mechanics in Pittsburgh.

One day the airport was fogged in and they were stuck in the hangar with nothing to do.

Buddy said, "Man, I wish we had something to drink!"

Bill says, "Me too. Y'know, I've heard you can drink jet fuel and get a buzz. You wanna try it?"

So they pour themselves a couple of glasses of high octane hooch and got completely smashed.

The next morning Buddy wakes up and is surprised at how good he feels. In fact he feels GREAT! NO hangover! NO bad side effects. Nothing! He was amazed!

As he's pondering this great discovery he and his friend have made, the phone rings. It's Bill.

Bill says, "Hey, how do you feel this morning?"

Buddy says, "I feel great. How about you?"

Bill says, "I feel great, too. You don't have a hangover?"

Buddy says, "No, that jet fuel is great stuff -- no hangover, nothing. We ought to do this more often!"

"Yeah, well there's just one thing."

"What's that?"

"Have you farted yet?"

"No..."

Continue reading "A rather crude but somewhat amusing joke...."…

Got my new webcam. Had a heck of a time getting it to work on this system, for some reason. Something to do with the fact that this is Windows XP64 and not Windows XP32.

Anyway, it works now, as you can see by the unattractive picture of me on the sidebar. And I know it's unattractive because I hardly ever have good pictures taken of me, by webcam or any other means.

A Virginia appeals court has upheld the first felony conviction under a state anti-spam law. In the process, the court also suggested that spam recipients might be able to sue spammers for money damages.

This comic made me seriously laugh out loud. Had tears in my eyes, in fact. Good stuff.

Someone from eBay came to Oztion with the sole purpose of buying items from me and others so that they could leave negative comments and be a pain in the neck.

eBay also has permanently removed my ability to post on their boards.

I think some people are getting nervous....

And given the way eBay Australia's traffic is declining, I can't say I'm surprised....

[EDIT] I've just found out that MANY critics of eBay have been permanently silenced. Not just in Australia, but all over the world. Those who were posting links to media articles, those who were organizing strikes or boycotts, those who were just too vocal about eBay's many, many problems and who too noticibly pointed out the stupidity of eBay's actions and the speculated on the consequences.

Mind you, these people are still allowed to SELL on eBay, so eBay is still thrilled to take their money. They just won't let them speak any more...

I can't say that I particularly blame eBay for this. I mean, I'd try to shut up my critics, too, especially if they were actually having an impact....

So I had to run out to the shops today to get some milk and a couple other odds and ends, and to make a long story short I ended up approaching a parking place from the wrong angle and I scraped the whole side of the car. Mildly dented, scraped the paint right off.... It was just me and the pole, thankfully, so it wasn't like I now have to settle with some other person, but I'm kinda bummed about it.

Just a real dumbarse maneuver, you know what I mean? *sigh*

EBAY has been hit by mass desertions, with almost 800 Australian store owners walking out on the internet auction giant in the wake of a large fee hike.

I was never a big fan of Steve Irwin. I liked him at first, in the early-mid 90s when he used to do guest visits to Dave Letterman, but generally I found him kind of annoying. I do respect that he did a great deal for many charities and for Australian quarantine awareness and lots of animal/nature conservation, and good on him, so I'm not bagging the bloke. I'm just saying that I wasn't particularly a fan.

That being said, I was quite shocked to hear today that he'd died rather suddenly. He was apparently only the third fatal case of a stingray attack ever known in Australia (stingrays are not normally able to kill anyone). He was so much larger than life, and seemed so invincible. I mean, I saw the guy deliberately pissing off spitting poisonous cobras just to get them to spit vendom at him for the sake of a television show. That's pretty much larger than life, and seems pretty damned invincible...

Anyway. I feel for his wife and children. I can't help but do so. It's just the sort of person I am.

Continue reading "Steve Irwin"…

My new computer, as I've mentioned, is in a black case. I have therefore named it Schwartz. Partly, this is the German word for "black", but I like the reference to the Mel Brooks Star Wars parody, Spaceballs. It's not my favorite movie or anything, but "may the schwartz be with you" and "use the schwartz" struck me as funny in a geeky, obscure sort of way.

So now my computer is officially Schwartz.

The previous computer didn't actually have a name, as it was Andrew's prior to being mine. The one before that, the one I built, was known as Baby.

Just in case anyone was curious. Which I'm quite sure you weren't.

The Naming of Hosts is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a host must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.

First of all, there's the name that the users use daily,
Such as venus, athena, and cisco, and ames,
Such as titan or sirius, hobbes or europa--
All of them sensible everyday names.

There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the web pages, some for the flames:
Such as mercury, phoenix, orion, and charon--
But all of them sensible everyday names.

But I tell you, a host needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can it keep its home page perpendicular,
And spread out its data, send pages world wide?

(From RFC 2100, and yes, I know what an RFC is, and yes, I am a geek. And the Schwartz is with me.

... this seems a very odd business decision by Ebay, and Google seems to be the clear winner in the deal.

(You can read the article, errr.... rant, really, for yourself, but I liked that particular line from it.)

Because ICQ sucks, I have had to get a new ICQ number. I couldn't remember the password and when I went to retrieve it, ICQ insisted that my email address wasn't registered, which I know perfectly well it was. Color me unimpressed with their "system".

The only reason I have ICQ, really, is to send SMS messages to Andrew's phone relatively easy (it's easier than logging in to the Vodafone site and definitely easier than punching buttons on the phone!). I don't even use the ICQ client (I use Trillian Pro). When I actually want to chat, I use GoogleTalk.

But anyway, if you had my ICQ number before and you want the new one, just let me know and I'll be happy to share it. Not that very many people talk to me that way, but, well, you never know. I thought I'd offer.

I've got my new computer, and the changeover was almost painless. I took the opportunity to clean my desk and move some stuff around. The new case is black. Previous one was that icky beige colour. This case is much smaller (thankfully) and the whole thing is quieter. All my drives are in, no worries, read perfectly. WindowsXP is activated and updated.

I haven't really put it through its paces yet, but it's got a much faster processer (almost 4 times as fast) and WAY more memory (2Gb! Woot!), so I'm expecting much better overall performance. I also expect to be able to multi-task and context-switch much more efficiently and without the hard drive contantly grinding as Windows writes to the drive for scratch space.

Now I just have the very, very tedious job of reinstalling all my software. Ugh. I do have all my anti-spyware and anti-virus and security stuff installed, as well as basic utilities (WinZip, WinRar, Firefox, etc.).

So. Ze computer, eet eez good. And it should last me a long time. The last one lasted five years or so, so we'll see how long I can stretch this one out to...

Went to bed last night immediately after dinner. I just felt really poorly, so I went to lie down and stayed there. Woke up this morning at 7:30 to the delightful sound of children fighting (don't know what they were fighting about; could have been anything, really). So I ended up sleeping about 12 hours, and my back is extremely stiff now. Owww. I feel better in general, though, so that's at least a good thing.

Today I'm going to be doing some backups of the critical stuff on my computer, the "can't be replaced" stuff (pictures, web stuff, etc.). I'm doing it not only because doing backups is a wise thing to do, but also because I'm getting my new computer today, woohoo!

The new computer has six USB ports, two of which are on the front (yay), and the case is black (cooool), and it'll have 2Gb of memory and an AMD64 processor with bus speed of 3.6ghz (I think 3.6, anyway, can't remember). New 80gb hard drive with Windows pre-installed (since you need a different version of WinXP for a 64bit processor), and, yes, a floppy drive, because I'm just so old school that I still occasionally use a floppy disk (no, seriously, I do).

Continue reading "Stuff & Computers"…

Wow, cool, you're exactly half my age.

I feel old.

Happy birthday, anyway.

I've ordered a new webcam. My little cheapy one is dead. Not that it took especially good pictures, mind you, and it was pretty cheap, so it's not a great loss or anything, but I found that I actually kind of miss the thing. Weird. I went for years without a webcam, only bought one because someone I wanted to talk to via video chat asked me about it, and now I find I've gotten to actually like having a webcam.

Go figure.