You're Swimming In It

Site Unhacked, Plus New Ways to Follow Me

brandon — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:28:42 +0000

I’ve (finally) removed the payday loan spam links from the sidebar.

Also, you can now see what I’m doing between blog posts in two new ways: I now Twitter, and you can see what I’ve been reading using my Google Reader Shared feed by either visiting or subscribing to the rss.

Americans are too large to discover it’s a small world after all

brandon — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:40:43 +0000

Disney’s retrofitting It’s a Small World, Pirates of the Carribean, Pinocchio, and Alice In Wonderland rides in order to keep the boats from bottoming out.

Puppy Video

brandon — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:51:32 +0000

Unpacking the Zeitgeist

brandon — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 17:32:18 +0000

The setup:
There’s a recent news item on WOWInsider about a ‘gold seller’ (someone selling WOW gold for real world cash) advertising by spelling out the name of their website in dead gnomes.

The challenge:
Explain this news story to someone living in 1977.

Background Information:
Computers: 1977 is the year the Apple II was introduced. The Apple II was capable of displaying 24×40 columns of uppercase only text to the screen (a TV by way of an RF Modulator (TVs wouldn’t come standard with RCA ports for quite some time), unless you had a ‘monitor’ which accepted a composite video signal directly), used an tape cassette to load programs and store data (the floppy disk wouldn’t be available for another year), and came standard with 4K of RAM.

The Internet: ARPANET was created in 1969, and X.25 had been created in 1976, but it would still be two years before CompuServe became the first company to offer public dial-in access to X.25 and offer email and technical support to owners of personal computers, though BBS use would continue to eclipse “internet” use for some time to come. The several methods of “internet(work)” linking wouldn’t become collectively “The Internet” for the better part of a decade.

Video Games: Atari had introduced the Pong arcade machine in 1972, and was available as a home console (one controller, one game, just pong) in 1975. By 1977 there were several Pong home console clones on the market and demand had died down, and by the end of 1977, Atari would release the Atari 2600 (the third home game system with removable game cartridges, but the first to gain any acceptance).

via http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/07/unpacking_the_zeitgeist.html

Separated at Birth (and by 53 years)?

brandon — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 18:48:05 +0000

The Closer to the Bone

Baby Got Back

You decide.

Finally…

brandon — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 16:45:37 +0000

Since the claim in the header of the “Vegetarian” style hasn’t been true for about 6 months now, it’s about time that I’ve made a new style for the site.

Also, since the previous spam-fighting capcha thingy was working so well that nobody was able to post comments, and since removing spam-fighting captchas entirely land about a dozen spam posts for me to moderate in my inbox each day, I’m trying out a new one. To comment, simply follow the instructions at the bottom of the comment form and type the word “human” in the provided box.

Hungry for a Month

brandon — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 18:22:32 +0000

Day 18
“To this point, I’ve been a vegetarian for the entire month of November…While wandering around the grocery store comparing the cost effectiveness of rice versus beans, I came across some hotdogs. They were 88-cents. They were also labeled in Spanish. I paused for a minute to consider whether I was really ready to eat a 9-cent hotdog. I was.”

Start reading from the bottom.
http://hungryforamonth.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_hungryforamonth_archive.html

Testing for robots

brandon — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 15:32:46 +0000

I’ve installed the Image Captcha plugin from protectwebform.com to (hopefully) cut down on the amount of spam comments I have to deal with. It’s currently running in a ’smart’ mode where it will only show the captcha for ’suspicious’ ip addresses. It didn’t show it for me when I tested it. Let me know how (if) it works for you. If it successfully blocks the spam comments that the akismet plugin was missing, then I’ll leave it, otherwise I’ll unfortunately have to keep making it more of a pain in the ass for non-robots to comment until the robots get discouraged and go away.

My Superpower is Cuddles

brandon — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 15:03:43 +0000

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

brandon — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 18:13:20 +0000

ask wikipedia.