mcgees.org

My hard drive at home crashed this weekend.  Not the mcgees.org machine, but the Windows machine that I use for banking, browsing, and word processing.  I have that feeling of a deep pit in my stomach that always happens in these situations where I should have been more intelligent, should not have trusted the particular hardware I was using, and should have been more diligent about making backups.  I was cavalier, and once again it cost me.

I found a site called “Amazon Whacking” the other day.  The site describes a game in which you start with a book at Amazon, follow one of the links to “Customers who bought this book also bought”, then repeat step 2 until you cannot continue without repeating a book in your path.  The “world record” was listed at 61 steps.  This sounded miniscule, so a couple days ago I decided to try it myself.  Searching manually, without the aid of a script, I found one of length 319.  By that point I was getting a bit bored; I’m sure I could have extended it further.  I sent it in to the guy who runs the site, and he has just added it to the Amazon Whacking page as the new “world record”.

Recent Microsoft applications and operating systems employ a highly annoying feature called “Personalized Menus”.  If a menu item is not used it will disappear from the menu.  The menu will then contain a little arrow that you have to click on to enable full menus.  Here is how to turn off this feature in various settings.

To disable menu item hiding in the Start Menu, go to Start -> Settings -> Taskbar & Start Menu… and turn off “Use Personalized Menus”.

To disable Favorites menu item hiding in Internet Explorer, go to Tools -> Internet Options… -> Advanced and turn off “Enable Personalized Favorites Menu” under “Browsing”.

To disable menu item hiding in Microsoft Office applications, go to Tools -> Customize… -> Options and turn off “Menus show recently used commands first”.

Looks like I’m a minor hit.  There was a post on MetaFilter about CSS art (basically, using a web browser to generate images in ways it was not designed to.)  Turns out I had already done this a couple years ago.  I quickly cleaned up my source code to ready it for release, and posted some sample images.  You can view the sample page (takes a while to load, probably only works in IE), the original image, the PERL script, and the MetaFilter discussion.

The guy who said “that’s beautiful” is quite kind.

Would you have invested?

This is great.  Some wiseass was actually able to extract $3 from a Nigerian 419 scammer.  He needed this money to prove they were acting in good faith.  Go figure.

More on manipulating 419 scammers here.

The Safeway was completely empty save for us and a few other Microsoft people just like us — hair-trigger geeks in pursuit of just the right snack.  Because of all the rich nerds living around here, Redmond and Bellevue are very “on-demand” neighborhoods.  Nerds get what they want when they want it, and they go psycho if it’s not immediately available.  Nerds overfocus.  I guess that’s the problem.  But it’s precisely this ability to narrow-focus that makes them so good at code writing: one line at a time, one line in a strand of millions.

                Douglas Coupland, Microserfs

Meg Hourihan (of Pyra and Megnut fame) has written an insightful article on blogging.  It has been reposted on DaveNet.

“The original VisiCalc program that ran on the IBM PC in 1981 still runs on today’s PCs.”

You can download VisiCalc, forerunner of today’s spreadsheet programs, from the website of its original co-author.  Do not worry about hard disk space; the program is only 27,520 bytes, smaller than many image files on the web today.

For the twelfth bug of Christmas, my manager said to me,

   Tell them it’s a feature

   Say it’s not supported

   Change the documentation

   Blame it on the hardware

   Find a way around it

   Say they need an upgrade

   Reinstall the software

   Ask for a dump

   Run with the debugger

   Try to reproduce it

   Ask them how they did it and

   See if they can do it again.

Or maybe you would prefer the “ABCs of Unix”.  It’s actually a pretty good introduction to Unix for a neophyte:

…S is for Spell, which attempts to belittle, while

T is for True, which does very little.

U is for Uniq, which is used after Sort, and

V is for Vi, which is hard to abort…

Or perhaps your taste runs to a computer programming song called “Write in C,” sung to the lyrics of the Beatles’ “Let It Be”:

A thousand people sware that T.P.

Seven is the one for me.

I hate the word PROCEDURE,

Write in C.

Be afraid.  There are many, many more.

The weird thing is, I don’t think he’s kidding.

MSNBC thoughtfully gives us an article entitled So whatever happened to Linux?  “It’s for geeks,” describes the author, quoting a “consultant”.  We also learn that “Microsoft’s Windows operating system still rules.”  However, Linux is getting better; it “now more closely mimics the Windows world.”

Would someone remind me what the MS in MSNBC stands for, please?

I would be failing in my blogging duties if I did not go along with every other blogger in the known universe and note that Mozilla 1.0 is out of beta testing.  I am composing this post using Mozilla Navigator, in fact.

This clock is really cool.  Even cooler than the Industrious Clock.

My Survey of Four-Letter Domains is online.

The mathematics of Windows:

Do check out the site Computer Stupidities if you need to be cheered up.  This site houses a great collection of people being triumphantly stupid in the face of technology.  I present a tiny sampling here.

I own a computer store. One day, two policemen came
into the store and told that they owned a 486 and a
286. They asked if a 486 and a 286 could be assembled
together into a 686. I replied to the dumb request by
asking them if two 200 horsepower police cars can be
used to make up a 400 horsepower Ferrari. The
policemen didn’t get it and replied angrily that
altering car engines is strictly forbidden by law.

---

• Customer: “I have a very big problem! If you don’t
  help me right now I will return the computer!”

• Tech Support: “Well sir, what can I do for you?”
• Customer: “Well, I just got my system today, and my
  friend installed a screen saver, and it comes up
  fine…BUT EVERY TIME I MOVE THE MOUSE IT GOES
  AWAY!!!!!!!”

---

Fact: Boston Computer Museum sells chocolate bars shaped like floppy disks.

Fact: Three year old kids see daddy boot his computer using a floppy to play games.

Fact: Computers are warm inside…even some quite expensive computers.

I don’t want to talk about it.

---

One user was very angry with me, because the
documentation that I had written did not work for him
at all. So I walked him through the document step by
step. As I went along, I asked him what had happened
on screen as he completed each step. When I got to
step 5, I got total silence as a response. When I
asked him again what happened when he did step 5, he
said, “Oh, I didn’t understand what that step was for,
so I skipped it.”

And one that turns the tables a bit…

---

A few years ago, my daughter took over my computer
sales and service business. Although she is probably
“techier” than I am now, at the time she was pretty
inexperienced, particularly when it came to hardware.
As part of her training, she assisted me while I did
various repairs. I remember stressing to her, “When
diagnosing and repairing problems, it’s important to
stay calm. If you panic, you’ll make mistakes.”

We were installing a hard drive in one particular
machine. The workbench was cluttered, so she had the
case, and I had the keyboard and monitor a few feet
away. After plugging everything in, I told her to hit
the power switch while I got ready to access the CMOS
from the keyboard. I was looking at the monitor when I
heard her calmly say, “Ok, now the drive’s on fire. Is
that normal?”

I had certainly never seen a drive actually burst into
flames before (obviously it was VERY faulty), and I
immediately shouted in a panicked voice “Turn it off!
Turn it off!” My daughter, however, was completely
calm.

Information may be out of date.

Several people have asked what I know about customizing ‘ringtones’ on a mobile phone.  If you have Cingular service and a compatible Nokia, use the site http://www.cingular.com/ringtones.  You can choose from premade tones or use their Java ringtone editor to compose or transcribe your own.  The tone I transcribed used 57 notes, and I was near the max note count permitted.  If I had to guess I would say you get 64 notes.  After choosing or transcribing a tune you can send it to your telephone for US$0.99; this seems a reasonable price.

I found this information through mlife.  If you have not visited you aren’t missing much.  They have a great guerrilla marketing campaign, but the site is an AT&T property boasting about their telephone service.  I learned another thing from it, though: users can dial #121 (that’s pound-one-two-one) to get news, stock quotes, etc.  AT&T are not crediting them (anywhere I saw, at least) but the system is undoubtedly Tellme’s 555-TELL service without the sing-song “Tell me” at the beginning.  The #121 service comes free with your subscription, so I’d suggest using it, especially if you normally have a block of unused minutes at the end of the month.  Or you could just use 1-800-555-TELL, also free, and bypass the middle-man.  Get a hands-free system for your phone, though; Nokia phones get so hot that you will burn your ear after five or ten minutes otherwise.

Note added 06 February 2002: I just tried to modify my AT&T Wireless #121 account through the Tellme site.  It worked.

Another note added 06 February 2002: This time when I called it did say “brought to you by Tellme.”  This is after I turned on automatic sign-in.  I don’t think it told me last time.  Perhaps it did and I’m just an idiot.

Here is a list of the ten most frequent four-word phrases in the King James Bible:

This is the sort of thing that would have taken years of scholarship even forty years ago, and yet I created this in less than one minute on a notebook PC (Clarification added 06 February 2002: It took less than a minute to run.  It took somewhat longer to write the script.  But not years longer.)  I used a home-baked Perl script to do this.  Perl can stand for “Practical Extraction and Report Language”; see why?

eFax have just sent a fax to the subscribers of their free service to inform them of a service ‘enhancement’:

eFax.com is introducing a new program designed to help ensure you get the high-quality Internet faxing you need.  eFax.com will now be faxing select special offers exclusively to our free customers.

So, opt out?  They tell you how: “Please consider upgrading to eFax Plus.”  I have been a customer for over three years.  The eFax Messenger Plus reader already contains a revolving banner ad, but I still should have seen the end of this too-good-to-be-true spam-free service coming. 

If you are curious, you can download the fax they sent.  You can choose between the native eFax version (this requires you download the monetarily-free eFax Messenger) and my GIF conversion.  If you are interested, the conversion involved printing to an Apple LaserWriter driver; there is no “print to file” option in the Print dialog so one has to set this on the printer properties.  This created a .prn file, which I then renamed to a .ps file.  I then loaded the .ps file in GhostView, converted it to a 16M-color bitmap at 120 dpi, opened the bitmap in Paint Shop Pro, converted it to a GIF and saved it.  You’re welcome.

I am proud of myself.  Through trial and error I have gotten Internet Explorer 5.0 working on Linux through WINE; I am composing this post using this.  You can read my report here.

Windows XP comes with something called a “File Transfer Wizard” that’s supposed to make transferring files from your old computer a snap.  Unfortunately, said “wizard” requires a fast processor and a big chunk of disk space on the old computer in order to work.  Hey Bill, if my old computer had those things, it wouldn’t be old.

                  - Evan Morris, The Word Detective (15 January 2002)

New Virus: Badtrans.B

This warning applies if you use Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express.

There is a new Windows virus, called Badtrans.B, spreading rapidly through email (I have been hit three times in the past 24 hours.)  The email subject of the infected message will be simply “Re:”.  The email body will be blank but the message will contain an attachment with a double extension: filenames will resemble Pics.zip.pif and Humor.mp3.scr.  When the message is opened, Outlook will launch the Internet Explorer (IE) parser to render the message.  IE versions 5.01 and 5.5 (but not 5.01SP2) contain an exploitable MIME bug allowing arbitrary code to be executed without prompting the user; this is the route of infection.

The virus has two main effects.  First, it will email infected messages, using its own MAPI code, to email addresses found in cached web pages.  Second (and more seriously) it will install a Trojan horse keystroke logger; the logger will be in effect when the title of the foreground window begins with ‘LOG’, ‘PAS’, ‘REM’, ‘CON’, ‘TER’, or ‘NET’ (for ‘logon’, ‘password’, ‘remote’, ‘connection’, ‘terminal’, ‘network’, etc.) and the keystroke log will be mailed to one of the creator’s (or creators’) email addresses.  The keystroke logging code is contained in %System%\Kdll.dll.

• More info on Badtrans.B from Symantec
• More info on the IE MIME exploit

In redesigning my book collection page this evening, I ran across the need for a routine to sort by Library of Congress call number.  This is actually nontrivial, as the following are all valid numbers:

• DA870.F64
• DK602.3.B76 1996
• Q335.P416 1994
• QA76.73.P22W35 1991
• RS75.P5

To add even more complexity, some number fields are sorted in strict ascending order (e.g., in “DK602.3.B76 1996″ the bold number would come after 9, after 80, after 600 but before 603) and some are sorted as decimals (e.g., in “Q335.P416 1994″ the bold number would come after 3000 and after 35 but before 4161.)  I wrote some Perl code for this, and it understands all call number forms that I am aware of.  If you stumbled upon this page looking for something like this, here it is:

sub locsort ($a,$b)
{
    @a = ($a =~ /^([A-Z]+)(\d+(?:\.\d+)?)\.?([A-Z]*)(\d*)\.?([A-Z]*)(\d*)(?: (\d\d\d\d))?/);
    @b = ($b =~ /^([A-Z]+)(\d+(?:\.\d+)?)\.?([A-Z]*)(\d*)\.?([A-Z]*)(\d*)(?: (\d\d\d\d))?/);

    return
	$a[0] cmp $b[0]
	    ||
	$a[1] <=> $b[1]
	    ||
	$a[2] cmp $b[2]
	    ||
	"0.$a[3]" <=> "0.$b[3]"
	    ||
	$a[4] cmp $b[4]
	    ||
	"0.$a[5]" <=> "0.$b[5]"
	    ||
	$a[6] <=> $b[6]
	    ;
}

The fsck program is extremely helpful and very informative.  Kudos to the developers (alas, they are coated in milk chocolate so I cannot partake [the Kudos, that is, not the developers {probably}]).

Hmmm.  This is frustrating.  My Linux box crashed while I was at work today, which shut down my web server, telnet and ftp access, and mail delivery.  And it might be bad, judging from the non-encouraging error messages I’m getting.

Of course, if you ever see this note, that means I have gotten it working again….

It is hard to believe that it is after midnight now.  There just doesn’t seem to be enough time to do everything I want to do these days.  This is mostly a good thing: there are a lot of activities that interest me at the moment, so I am never at a loss for something to do and enjoy.  Here is a list of activities I have wanted to pursue in the past couple of days, only a subset of which have been accomplished or attempted.

1. Play with Cakewalk.  Use it to record some of my musical compositions, with multiple vocal and instrumental tracks.
2. Order more stamps from Iowa Stamps & Coins for my ongoing (but unnamed) philatelic art project.  Work on the art project.  Transfer the pieces to a new album.
3. Work on a redesign of mcgees.org.
4. Install the new printer that has been sitting on my floor, in a box, since the day after Christmas.
5. Play some more with the new TiVo.
6. Watch some of the movies recorded by it.
7. Listen to my new CDs from Christmas.
8. Research the sport of fencing.
9. Add advertising to ScotchFinder (the advertisers are arranged, I just need to do some re-coding of the site.)  Add the ability to search the database via a toll-free telephone number.
10. Research whale deafness.
11. Continue reading The Annotated Alice, Infinite Jest, and The Life of Samuel Johnson.
12. Research PocketPCs, potentially to buy one soon.
13. Make hotel reservations for the UK trip.
14. Search Fresh Air archives.
15. Buy add-ons to the hamster habitats.
16. Clean my study.
17. Reinstall Microsoft Visual Studio at home from my CDs, which I haven’t done since my hard drive crashed.

These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.  (You probably think some of these are fake, thrown in for humor.  That is not the case.  Even the whale one.)  Implicitly on the list, of course, is to write about the activities in this ‘blog.

My makeshift way of dealing with the situation has been to get 5.5 hours of sleep per night.  I think this is beginning to take a toll.  It’s getting close to 12:30.  I will probably go watch half an hour of “Antiques Roadshow” on TiVo, pour a malt, maybe scoop a bit of Ben and Jerry’s (which is, by the way, now the most popular tourist attraction in Vermont.  Yikes.)

More descriptions of the activities on the list will follow, as time permits.  I have found that it is frequently easier to write about one’s experiences doing something after one has already done the something.  Wish me luck for making the time.

With respect to the last post, it looks like IE will ignore classes selected into SPAN elements much of the time.  Perhaps the most conservative route would be to use DIVs exclusively, as I have not run into any problems with them so far.

I would really like some standardization on this front.  There exists a spec, but every browser’s implementation is so riddled with bugs that any CSS design is a minefield of potential incompatibilities.

Revised: It looks like I originally mischaracterized the bug.  The real bug seems to be that Netscape will not allow CSS padding or margin settings to be set for a TD element.  IE, on the other hand, won’t let them be set for a SPAN element.  Both render the code correctly if they are set for a DIV element.  Go figure.