What happens if you don’t test your programs. A tongue in cheek look at programming – and not just for geeks either – very funny.
We received the check from HP yesterday for the rebate for our computer which was nice and fast – less than 4 weeks from purchasing the computer and sending the rebate stuff off. The funny thing is that I received an email this morning to say that the cheque had been cleared for payment and to wait 2-4 weeks to receive it. It is not often that snail mail is quicker than email!
I’m still awaiting confirmation from all of the other rebates I’ve applied for – none of them have even acknowledged the receipt of the application. This area of shopping needs some serious looking at by government inspectors or something – either that or they should let me have a job where I can take 12 weeks to answer a letter of correspondance!
Blogdigger can show recent posts by zipcode with mine highlighted with the link. The first post is one by Mike – way to go! Mine is nowhere to be seen though (yet). It has some new feeds that I’ve not come across, including one for OCLC and also has a feature to ignore a particular blogger if you don’t want their results. Maybe I should start another category for this.. Now posted to a category called geoblogging.
Thanks to Research Buzz for the information on this one (a worthy subscribe if you are interested in the latest goings on in the search engine world (and not just google)
Google Maps for my old location with the local blogs is pretty neat. My Dublin, Ohio location has some new blogs I’ve not read but doesn’t have this blog on it – yet!
Which would you choose (if any?). My first reaction would be to use MS Money as I’ve heard nasty things about quicken. So I fired up the free copy that came with the computer and it started to go through the wizard. Then the autoupdate routine kicked in, it needed to restart itself so I let it. On the restart the wizard didn’t resume (or even kick in). I tried to add my bank account to the system and although it recognises the bank, it will not download the data with a message saying set up the account again or contact technical support. As the software is an OEM version, this means contacting HP and we all know where that is going to end up….So I’m off to try quicken.
A long time ago I worked out the script needed to look up books on the Cheshire Library system from an amazon page with the Library lookup page.
Now that I’m living in Ohio, I needed the same for the Columbus Metropolitan Library, so here it is. Just drag CML to your link bar, find a book on amazon and then click the link to open the page on the library system.
I sat through the Social engineering webcast from the Digital Blackbelt website which had some interesting ideas about how successful social engineering hacks can be. I had actually read/heard about most of them from various sites but it did have some good ideas. (Google Hacking for penetration testers is a great source for things like this and a very interesting read. Written by Johnny-I-Hack-Stuff)
The weird thing is that it was aimed at developers, but none of the things discussed were really aimed at developer accounts, more at physical security, passwords etc. I was really expecting things on how to code to avoid possible social engineering attempts – such as when providing “forgotten password” functions on the page, don’t insist that users have to use your secret questions as often mothers maiden names are not actually that secret. (I’m the Andy that gets quoted at the end of the talk (twice))
Kelly passed on a music meme and so here are my answers…
- Amount of Music on my computer 14.6gb although 3.6 of that are talking books
- The last CD I bought Keane’s hopes and fears. Some great songs although they do tend to sound very samey if you listen to them a lot.
- Item playing right nowThe Call’s Let The Day begin – mainly because it was the last tape that I recorded to mp3 before the clearout before moving to the states. I first heard this whilst at Greenbelt in 1988 and loved it. Shame they didn’t go onto do anything else that got popular.
- 5 songs I listen to a lot
1. Dirty by Audio Adrenaline – in particular the Stoke On Trent remix where the local town was used over the normal lyrics when they were interviewed by Cross Rhythms radio. This new mix got played until the boss found out and pulled it for the official link.
2. Something by the Newsboys – too many good tracks to mention and is often on my playlist.
3. Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen – keeps popping up on my Yahoo launchcast (which is how I tend to listen to music most of the time when at the computer)
4. Honestly by Stryper – can you tell I like the oldies?
5. Manic Monday by Relient K although I’m reluctant to post that as I might get fan mail again from all the females who think that I am somehow in the band because I posted I got to see them in concert. Relient K topped Yahoo’s Who’s Next poll recently so they are starting to go places. (yep thats another 80’s hit) - Five people to whom I’m passing the baton
Danny (good excuse to get blogging again!)
Mike
Angela
Dave
Jon
Don’t get shocked or excited! I went to look at my site at the library yesterday and found that it was blocked. This is the first time that I am aware of that my site has made the filtering engines and been classified. Apparently it was blocked as it is on a server that hosts pornography or free sites. I know for a fact that it doesn’t host free pages and there may be some sites on the server that have adult content. However, blocking by ip address seems pretty drastic as using ip to get to the server fails as it relies on the hostheaders to direct you to the appropriate virtual server/directory on the machine – instead you get a “no website exists at this site” message.
I’ve contacted the library and SecureComputing.com who make the filter to see if I can be removed. (The library assistant didn’t have the correct password to temporarily override the filter when I asked)