Eclipse Pics For those of you who missed the eclipse last wednesday, check out this awsome picture by ~wiwijumbo. Here's the source link.

Images of Iraq This is sort of interesting, a gallery of images of Iraq, from a farker who is stationed there. Nothing overly special to see, but still interesting to see what life is like on that side of the world. However, the temperature is pretty crazy :)

The Packet Song Got a link to the Peter Packet Theme on mp3 from Dana. Thanks!

Rejected iPod Themes In light of the new U2 themed iPod, NSLog pointed to some Rejected Limited Edition iPods.

Etan also posts some of his thoughts on the newly released iTunes 4.7.

Another Flash Game... Paper Toss Well crap, there goes the rest of the day. Thanks again fark :P

Triumph Spins iFilm points to a(nother) great Triumph the insult comic visit to the 3^rd debate, with results just as hilarious as you would expect. Looks like iFilm has lots of Triumph clips :)

LED Porn Well, this blog points to the oh-so-wrong and oh-so-not-safe-for-work page of LED Porn.

Cat Tossing in 0-G I haven't seen this quicktime movie before, but thanks to boing boing I now know what it looks like to toss a cat around in 0-G. Update Link seems to be dead, anyone got an mirror?
Update2: Here's another copy from an updated story.

This is almost as good as this pinky video which I'm happy to say that the cat gets it's own back in the end :) Hat tip to jwz for this one.

More Linux vs Windows Security The Reg has a long Windows vs Linux report. Linked from /. (discussion), and it seems to take into account things like damage potential, ease of exploitation, size of deployment, busting some myths, etc. I haven't had a chance to read the entire thing yet, but while the Reg isn't the biggest MS fan in the world, I trust their reporting a bit more than Microsoft's "facts" somehow. But hey, I'm biased as well.

I guess the problem is that no matter who does the reporting and comparing they'll have some link to something, or someone will dig up that sometime around 1992 someone in the organization mentioned that "this microsoft thing is kinda cool" and therefor is biased, or they have a linux server so they can't possibly report fairly.

It's also the right tool as Dana is constantly saying, but there are definately crossovers in between linux and windows as far as the tools that are available for both. Anyway, recommended reading of course, and the /. discussion I'm sure will be full of intelligent and calm discussion :)

BSD IDS There is a new Intrusion Detection System for FreeBSD. The thesis is available. From the email to the IDS list:

The IDS system is designed as a kernel module for FreeBSD 5.2. It is inspired by the SpamAssassin program, which detects spam by applying a set of tests to every email message and counting a sum of point score generated by each test. My IDS system applies a set of tests to every running process in the OS and counts its score generated by the tests. Therefore, the purpose of the IDS is not to monitor the network traffic, but rather to monitor the process activity.

On Web Designing... Funny link: Software is too expensive to build cheaply...: If Architects Had To Work Like Web Designers... Hilarious. Probably go this from Kasia, or not.... somewhere, I don't remember.

Another Online RSS Service Newsgator has launched NewsGator Online, a simillar service to bloglines. Anyone tried this yet?

Attention Canadian TV Viewers Darren noted that Degrassis new show is a) kinda surreal to those of us who watched the "real" version back in the day (and who are seeing the old kids appearing as adults on the show), and b) Jay and Silent Bob will appear in a three episode story arc. Very cool.

Oh and Darren.... totally agree on the Caitlin thing...

Political T-Shirts Boing boing points to t-shirts with some current political type quotes. A couple of references to Pres. Bush's remark about the internets, and a great one from Jon Stewart's appearance on CNN Crossfire.

Speaking of Jon Stewart, his spin on his Crossfire is on ifilm. You can also access his original appearence from there as well. Great and funny stuff.

Image Organization Under Linux with F-Spot Garrett over at linuxart asks What do you do with your images?

Good question, and it looks like f-spot has gotten a lot of work lately, so pass on your ideas!

Monster Sunfish Wow, I don't know if I'd want to find a giant sunfish washed up on the beach. With scary picture.

Debian Thoughts on Ubuntu Development Model mbanck has some thoughts in his avogato diary on The Ubuntu development model.

Half Life 2 Gone Gold Well, Half Life 2 has gone gold.... guess I know what I'm doing on November 16^th. What a great early birthday present!

Distributed Multiheaded X DMX sounds pretty cool:

Xdmx is proxy X server that provides multi-head support for multiple displays attached to different machines (each of which is running a typical X server). When Xinerama is used with Xdmx, the multiple displays on multiple machines are presented to the user as a single unified screen.

So basically you can hook up other computers and have their displays used as if they were attached via another video card to your computer.

Personally I like my dual monitor + (dual) KVM so I can have two monitors and use them both in both windows and linux, but hey, this lets you use your spare laptop (or two) as an extra part of a screen :) From the slashdot article about dual monitors.

LOTR:ROTK Preview Can any real geek watch the new Return of the King trailer and not get excited and want it to be December?

eBay for Your Ghost Hunting Needs For when you have creaking steps and the sounds of dragging chains and don't have your EMF detector, check eBay for the needed tools.

I love the internet!

Thoughts on Code Maintenance A friend of mine from an ex-work send me this quote, saying she saw it thinking of me:

"Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live."
-- M. Golding

Truer words were never spoken...

New Medial Revelations About Your Weight My buddy Anthony threw me some information about some new medical revelations about exercise and health. Read on for them. Some new research on regular exercise

Q: I've heard that cardio vascular exercise can prolong life. Is this true?

A: Your heart is only good for so many beats, and that's it...don't waste them on exercise. Everything wears out eventually. Speeding up your Heart will not make you live longer; that's like saying you can extend the Life of your car by driving it faster. Want to live longer?
Take a nap.

Q: Should I cut down on meat and eat more fruits and vegetables?

A: You must grasp logistical efficiencies. What does a cow eat? Hay and corn. And what are these? Vegetables. So a steak is nothing more than an efficient mechanism of delivering vegetables to your system.

Need grain?
Eat chicken. Beef is also a good source of field grass (green leafy vegetable). And a pork chop can give you 100% of your recommended daily allowance of vegetable products.

Q: Should I reduce my alcohol intake?

A: No, not at all. Wine is made from fruit. Brandy is distilled wine, that means they take the water out of the fruity bit so you get even more of the goodness that way. Beer is also made out of grain.
Bottoms up!

Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?

A: Well, if you have a body and you have body fat, your ratio is one to one. If you have two bodies, your ratio is two to one, etc.

Q: What are some of the advantages of participating in a regular Exercise program?

A: Can't think of a single one, sorry. My philosophy is: No Pain...Good

Q: Aren't fried foods bad for you?

A: YOU'RE NOT LISTENING!!!. Foods are fried these days in vegetable oil.
In fact, they're permeated in it. How could getting more vegetables be bad for you?

Q: Will sit-ups help prevent me from getting a little soft around the middle?

A: Definitely not! When you exercise a muscle, it gets bigger. You should only be doing sit-ups if you want a bigger stomach.

Q: Is chocolate bad for me?

A: Are you crazy? HELLO ...... Cocoa beans ... another vegetable!!! It's the best feel-good food around!

Q: Is swimming good for your figure?

A: If swimming is good for your figure, explain whales to me.

Q: Is getting in shape important for my lifestyle?

A: Hey! 'Round' is a shape!

Well, I hope this has cleared up any misconceptions you may have had about food and diets and remember, "Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - strawberries in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming - WOO HOO! What a Ride!"

Woohoo!

Doom 3 SDK Released Mod authors take note! The DOOM 3 SDK has been released. Now mod away!

Anyone have Experience With Interland.com Hosting? Just wondering if anyone out there has had any experience with doing web hosting with Interland and their "Virtual Hosting" system (you get a virtual host but root and your own apach server, etc). Any feedback appreciated.

MusicBrainz Blog Now Alive Cool, MusicBrainz, the software that I use for all the tagging and organizing of my mp3s and oggs (and you should too!) has a MusicBrainz Blog up and alive. Good way to keep your software's users in touch with what is going on.

Lunar Photo Op Thanks to Cat5 for pointing out that there is a October Lunar Eclipse on the 27^th. Break out the cameras! Note: Yup, wrong date, thanks.

MS Users Start Your Upgrades! As seen on slashdot, it looks like a whack of new updates for windows have been posted to the Microsoft technet update page. Included in the goodness are Shell, NNTP, SMTP, Zip, and a few others. Doesn't look like it's on windows update yet, but you can download the hotfixes from the linked page. Not all these affect all versions, and in a couple of cases it looks like you're safe if you are running xpsp2, but not all.

Funny TLC Ad My old friend Dan thew a link up to this ad which while it might be a gag, is funny in a "ha ha only serious" way, and is (IMHO, and to my sick mind) damn funny :)

Pic of the Day (wow) All I can say to this is "wow".

Well, that and "it's now my wallpaper" :)

iPodder Software Much as I love to trade barbs with Scoble about his software philosophies vs mine, he does find good stuff now and then :) Case in point: iPodder, the cross-platform Podcast receiver.

Basically ipodder will grab RSS feeds of podcasts (with possible bittorrent enclosures) and throw them into your media player (currently itunes). There is apple and windows support, with linux support coming soon. Very nifty!

Addition to Rock Paper Scissors If you're bored with Rock Papers scissors best to try Rock-Paper-Scissors-Spock-Lizard. Again, link via fark....

Jailed for a Wedgie? Wow, this just blows my mind as to how stupid things have become in the world today. This story of a Muskego boy faceing sexual assault charges is probably the most amazing display of idiocy I've seen so far. According to the story the 16 year old:

... boy was arrested, handcuffed and taken to the Muskego Police Department from the school.

After giving his 15 year old ex-girlfriend a wedgie. Now wedgies are bad, we all know that, and wedgies are embarrassing and all that, but jail?? A stern talking to by a teacher would be 100x more than what people in my high school or elementary school got back in the day.

Times are a changin' I guess.

Story via fark, who aren't all that impressed with it either.

HL2 Looks like the pre-order for Half Life 2 is going to be on Steam tomorrow. Steam is valves online delivery system, ie: you buy a game online and it's downloaded to your computer, so all updates, etc are done online automatically.

Anyway, the pre-order is going to be up on the steam system tomorrow, so you can get a variety of options, from HL2 and CounterStrike: Source to HL2, CS:S, Half Life 1: Source, t-shirts, etc. Of all of this the only thing actually available now is CounterStrike: Source though. Wonder if this is marketting hype to get people ready and bought in or if they are actually close to releasing HL2... course, if they were close they'd keep their mouths shut and not piss people off by making them pay for something they can't get right away :)

Not that I'm tired of waiting of course....

Doom 3 For Linux Demo My buddy Khensu threw a link to the DOOM III GNU/Linux FAQ. Right now I'm at a bit of a loss for spare computer time (much less gaming time :) but I'll definately check this out when I'm back up and running a bit more. Shacknews also it.

Immature Linux Logo (Penguin) Man, I never realized how un-cute a newly-hatched penguin was!

ArcterUpdate This is for those who can't get to arcterex.net (due to it sitting in a corner of my basement), I figured I'd throw out a bit of an update. Read on for why I've been silent here and more.... For those of you who don't know, I bought a house, lost my job, started doing massive renovations on the house, and found a new job (starting tomorrow) all in a quite compressed length of time.

The move is complete! All my worldly possessions are now stuff into the basement of my new house, along with cats, computers, etc. We are still (still!) waiting for the guy who is doing the ceilings to finish, and as soon as that is done we can finish the floor (currently a stylish bare plywood motif), and when we have a floor the fun stuff, like unpacking and not living out of boxes, can start. I do have internet, in that it's set up and I finally broke down yesterday and hooked up my linux workstation so I could get some net time.

The cats are adjusting as well as could be expected, with some changes in position on the feline totem pole (Corny has re-claimed the bed (well, foamy on the floor of the someday-to-be office) as his, and is defending it feverantly), and other fun stuff (they are just learning about the concept of stairs for example). The house is full of very scary noises and new smells, but they have lots of places to hide amidst my their boxes.

I found out from the cable modem guy that the wire that Cat5 nicely put in all over the house for me (he worked his ass off wiring the entire place with coax for cablevision and cat 5e for both phone and net) was old and busted. Turns out no one told him that the pile of wire that he used was ripped out of my in-laws house by the cable guy saying it was old and busted! D'oh! Cableguy left a box of good wire though, so I'll be re-pulling some of the cablevision runs in the next couple of days. Some have already been walled up so they'll have to live with a less than perfect signal.

Other than that life goes on. I'm resisting setting up any more computers simply because of the construction going on around and my lack of desire to have to re-set everything up when the office is turned back into an office and not a make-shift bedroom :) Well, that and there isn't any room.