Category: Tech

The reason why UCI was knocked off the net yesterday

From today’s inbox…

At around 4:20pm Wednesday Oct 23, campus connectivity to the Internet was lost. After some work tracking it down, it was determined that a host on campus was attacking random hosts on the Internet, which caused the campus firewall to slow down to the point that it was no longer passing packets. The network with the offending host was located around 6:30pm and turned off, and the problem went away.

Increasing my tech firepower: Sony Ericsson T68i

ckb-t68iSo the reason I’ve been blogging at a minimal level the past couple of days is that I got a new phone. Not the Danger Hip Top that’s the current Geek Objet d’art of the moment, but the equally-as-cool Sony Ericsson T68i

The T68i hit my radar screen (well, everyone’s radar screen) back at Jobs’ Macworld NY keynote this year when he was using one to show-off iSync, the dialing capabilities of the 10.2 Address Book, and the OS level integration with Bluetooth. First time in awhile that a non-Apple product was actually the most impressive thing I’d seen in the keynote.

Anyway, I’d hit the wall with my current cell phone service (AT&T’s One Rate plan) which was terrific in Los Angeles, but spotty in Orange County. The phone was nice, a Nokia 6162, but pretty much of a barge compared to what the current current tech level is. The tipping point was the release of iSync. For a beta release, it was working great with my iPod, .mac account, and a Visor Platinum, but the phone thing was starting to bug me – especially after reading the early reports of iSync working perfectly with the T68i.

So all I was really waiting for was a decent plan that offered the phone: AT&T or T-Mobile. T-Mobile’s network in Southern California is Verizon, which is an automatic “no way” for me. I’d rather eat a bug than use Verizon. AT&T analog blows in O.C., especially around UC Irvine where I work, but I was hoping their GSM network would pick up. Early reports from news://alt.cellular.attws were inconclusive, so I was basically on my own.

Then Amazon has was running a deal for a T-Mobile for $50 after the various rebates. Then I heard that Best Buy was offering a special on AT& T68i, so what the hell – I’ll go check it out. The Best Buy special is pretty nice. $199 for the phone. $50 mail-in rebate from AT&T. 50% off the price of the phone if you buy any two accessories (like a power adapter and a car charger). So after dealing with the activation bureaucracy, I had a new phone. It’s really small – not much longer than the space bar on my PowerBook G4. The screen is bright and the joystick navigation was easy enough to deal with without going to the manual too often. For the first time ever, I can now get phone reception inside my office which had always been a dead zone.

bluetooth-menuOne major irritation I have with the phone is the damn flashing green LED that let’s you know everything is OK. This is a violation of every fundamental design law I can think of. A flashing light indicates that you need to pay attention to it. The damn LED is bright enough to show through my shirt pocket.

Obviously the next step was a Bluetooth adapter, so I picked up one up the following day at the South Coast Plaza Apple Store. 10.2 recognized the adapter instantly and threw up a bunch of options I still have to familiarize myself with.

Anyway, iSync was next and it recognized the phone instantly, didn’t even have to add it.

isync

More phone adventures as they come in.

Blinkenlights in Paris

blinkenlights-paris1This week’s edition of Off The Hook interviews one of the project managers of the Chaos Computer Club’s Blinkenlights installation on the side of the Bibliothèque nationale de France building in Paris. This is an amazing set up. The entire side of the building has been transformed into a giant 20 x 26 pixel computer screen. Folks can download a copy of their ArcadePaint program which will generate the XML files for CCC to place your animation on the building’s playlist. Plus, folks can call up the controller and play Tetris, Pong, Breakout, or Pac-Man.I’ve had the live stream up all day at work and am blown away by some of the animations. Lots of cool geometric art, punctuated by the occasional Tetris game, and old/new geek memes like the Matrix screen character drip, and Ellen Feiss’ Apple ad.The QuickTime stream is a high quality MPEG4 one (you’ll need QT6) and I’m as impressed by the stream quality as I am by the art. Not a single jerk or dropout all day.

blinkenlights-ccc

A hollow voice says “plugh”

Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the game Adventure, or as I knew it in my early CP/M days when I started high school, ADVENT.

I spent close to 120 man-hours on ADVENT plopped in front of a GNAT System 9 equipped out with the famous Lear Siegler ADM-3A terminal, dual eight inch floppy drives, running on CP/M. Somewhere in one of my various droppings of stuff I have printouts of two complete Adventure runs along with some hand drawn maps of Colossal Cave and the two mazes (all alike, and all different)

And here I thought that XYZZY was a nonsense word, but it turns out there’s more to it.

Email alias trick

Garth of Deadly Bloody Serious points out a cool technique for dealing with spam.

It’s easy for me to manufacture email addresses on demand for registration with web sites, subscribing to mailing lists and so on because pretty much anything sent to my domain ends up in my inbox.

Even if you don’t have a domain of your own, though, you can get much the same effect:

username+nameofpotentialspammer@yourdomain.org

For some reason, SMTP servers stop analyzing the address at the plus sign, so as long as what’s before the plus is your usual email address, the mail will get through to you. Your mail filtering rules, on the other hand, will probably be able to match on the full address including what’s after the plus. Easy, huh?