Paint Economy

Ahh Home Depot. I could see myself spending lots of money there. Wait, I just did. Sox and I decided that we need to spruce up the shack a little so we decided to paint. In retrospect we should have asked our landlord for some money for paint, but we didn’t.

I know people complain about big box stores, and I know I should help the local economy but the store is pretty convenient. Add on some knowledgable staff, and we are set for painting this weekend.

We still have some prep to do before we can actually paint, and I hope I can get it done before the work party starts. Washing the walls sucks big time. With that out of the way we will be able to spackle and sand.

If anyone is interested in joining the work party, we would be grateful, and you will be full of food and beer. Just let me know.

Best Blond Joke

I am constantly getting sent jokes by friends, most of which are quite funny. But this blonde joke takes the cake.

Love it!!!

Presumed Buried

Most evenings Aphro is sleeping on our bed. Tonight when I put something away in the room, I commented to Sox that the cat was missing. I presumed she was downstairs eating.

When Sox went into our room, she discovered Aphro had buried under the covers, and was sleeping soundly. Aphro is so cute some times.

Extraneous Downgrade

On this site I am using version Gallery 1.5.1. When I first discovered this software I thought it was awesome. It seemed fast, had an easy to use interface, I could get up and running in no time, configuration was a breeze, upgrading was simple, and it was stable.

There were rumours about Gallery 2 that was in the works. Something about a complete rewrite. It used a more modular development style, used a database backend, was supposed to be more configurable, and more exensible. When I could I downloaded a beta and gave it a test run.

The beta seemed stable enough, but lacked a lot of features that the regular stream already had. The admin interface was a bear; it felt overly complex and hard to grasp. Overall, it was also, very, very slow. So slow that I decided to dump it.

Over on another site I run (my baby blog [yes that means Sox is pregnant]) I decided to give Gallery 2 another go since it had been taken out of beta and released. I installed the files, got the database installed and the tables created, and set it up (the documentation was not straight forward),. I downloaded the necessary modules, enabled and configured them. So far so good.

Then I created my first album. The process was pretty familiar, but the end result was not what I liked. One of the stupid things that I dislike about Gallery 2 is the URL’s created for albums and pictures. I like clean URL’s with nice names, but even when I turn on the clean URL feature of Gallery 2, there was extraneous crap in the album URL’s (geeks get annoyed by the stupidest things). This software was also still way too slow.

I stuck with it for a while, but never grew to like it like the original it is supposed to replace. Yesterday I did a downgrade from Gallery 2 to 1.5.2-RC1.

I am much hapier. The interface is familiar (lame reason to downgrade), but the performance is back, the features I like are back, the ease of use is back. I dumped the crap I didn’t like and ended up with what I do like.

I sincerely hope that the Gallery team can fix the problems they have created. I think it is admirable that they chose to start from scratch the way they did. There is absolutely no way that the team will be able to please everyone. I don’t agree with some of the decisions they made (particularly the UI issues), and I wish them the best of luck because in my mind, they are going to have to make some drastic changes to get me to upgrade again.

My problem now is that the version I am using wil eventually be phased out. No more new development eventually, so what happens when there is a security flaw found? Apparently security fixes will continue to be released for this version, which I really hope is true. Still, makes me wonder if that will be the case.

2005 Photography in Review

Last year I did a year in photography gallery. I chose my best/favorite shot from each month, and made a special gallery containing just those picture. I continue this tradition today.

This is my 2005 Year in Review

Taken at Thetis lake, this was one of the very few snow days in Victoria in 2005.

A Macaulay Point Park walk with Yoshi. Nice sunny February day. I had looked through these trees many times before, but the light, the sky, and the clouds combined perfectly for this shot.Taken at Thetis lake, this was one of the very few snow days in Victoria in 2005.

This is an unusual shot of cherry blossoms done in black and white. In the camera I bumped up the contrast to achieve this almost infrared effect. Beyond this and the resizing, there are no enhancements.

This is one of my most favorite pictures of the entire year. I saw this scene in my head as I looked at a slowly dripping fountain. I was able to achieve what I envisioned.

Taken days after I got married. I love the colors, I love the rings, I love the depth of field, I love my wife.

The was one of the most amazing plants I photographed this year. While on this shoot I neglected to double check my camera’s settings. I was shooting ISO 1600 the entire time. This shot wasn’t ruined too badly though. I corrected the white balance, and bumped the contrast to accentuate the white.

A craggy old tree up at Rathtrevor beach, a wonderful backdrop, and a slight spotlight tokeep the eye interested. For some reason I can stare at this picture for hours.

At a wedding reception for some very good friends the kids were entertained by clowns who did some face painting. E here was a ferocious lion. I can never get over how lucky I was with this shot. The right location, right timing, the right pose. I love it.

Sunsets can be hard to capture. What you see is hardly what you get. I took many shots this day, but this is one of my favorites. The setting sun, the textured water, the fading colors.

Taken in Ottawa during the fall, the colors were a little more muted that previous years (or so I am told). On the way to a walk we drove through this bridge. After the hike we stopped a few times along the way so I could take some pictures.

A smooth lake with a mirror finish, mist rising lazily, people out walking dogs. There definitely is an element of luck in photography.

This was the highlight shot for December. Tough month photography wise. I didn’t get out very often due to Christmas plans. For this shot I stopped down the aperture, and bumped up the exposure time. With the shutter open I took half the time to zoom in, and the other half to expose the leaf. This creates a somewhat dreamy leaf.

Renovated Christmas

Christmas this year was pretty awesome. Sox, her mum, and I joined my sister and my mom at mom’s newly renovated house in Nanaimo. We went up on the 24th, spent a lazy day with the dogs

ate some yummy food

and dreamed of what was under the tree for the next day.

Christmas morning we opened our stockings, played with the toys inside, ate a fabulous eggs benedict breakfast, then settled into opening the gifts.

It was a pretty tiring morning.

Games and fun were had.

Christmas dinner was yummy.

Soon it was time to turn in.

Boxing day Sox and I took Yoshi for a walk on the beach,

enjoyed the sunset,

then loaded our car and headed off to Powell River to visit her dad and step-mom.

On the 27th we took the dogs for a walk around Mud Lake. Very lush and wet forest.

The 28th saw us board the ferry

for the return trip to the island, and the drive home. Very relaxing and fun despite the amount of travelling in such a short time.

Tidbits Season

Some tidbits for my neglected blog.

Friday at work there was a bit of a celebration for the team members who worked on one of the projects that our customer GA’d. The celebration was an indoor rock climbing session at CragX here in Victoria. I hadn’t been climbing there in close to 10 years I think. It certainly was a blast. We had a couple hours to play there, and I made the most of it. By the time we were ready to leave, my arms were pretty fried. The last climb I attempted I got up about 10 feet, then my arms gave out, and I came down to the ground (quickly). The belayer wasn’t expecting that, and by the time the slack was taken up by the rope stretching, my harness was pretty tight, and my tippy toes were just barely touching the ground. Yowch. Back at the office, typing was quite difficult. My fingertips felt like they had been sandpapered off. Very odd feeling.

Saturday I had a course I signed up for. An 8 hour long Photoshop course. I got a lot out of the course, but I think a couple of the other people in the class got pretty lost by the end of it. For me, it was a great way to complement, and pull together all the knowledge I already had. Photoshop has some pretty powerful features. I currently use PaintShop Pro at home, but I think that translating what I learned will not be that difficult. Some of the info on color management will be put on hold until I start printing at home

Sunday I had a great mountain bike ride with Yoshi and a couple other people. Not a very long ride, but it had been a while since I had been out. Yoshi certainly enjoyed it.

Tonight was the annual trip to Butchart Gardens to see the lights. A little wet, but the nice thing was this kept the crowds down. Each year there is something different. The have finished the 12 days of Christmas, so this year they added an outdoor skating rink.

I originally wanted to have separate entries for all of these, but I am running out of steam. The Christmas season is catching up to me, and I am definitely ready for a break.

Disappointing Glory

Saturday was the last meeting of the photoclub before Christmas. How time flies. We met at Mount Doug Beach, and when I say we, I mean myself and one other person. Neither of us were really into shooting either. It was cold, and early. My plans was to be there to catch a beautiful sunrise. The whole week leading up to the shoot there were gorgeous sunrises.

As I got ready for the shoot, I realized that we were going to miss the good light, then while in transit I watched the sunrise fizzle. Nada, nothing. Disappointing. Since we were there we chose to give it a shot and see what happened. Can’t say I am overly thrilled with any of my shots, but here they are in all their glory.

Phishing Support

Who here has heard the term phishing before? In a nutshell, an unscrupulous person tries to trick you into divulging personal information to gain access to accounts you hold. Quite often this is to try and break into your eBay, PayPal, of even Bank Accounts.

One of the key things to look for in a suspected phishing attack, is that the sender of the message matches the correct url. If you receive an email from gfox@somebadplace.com, and it tells you to login to your muddylaces account, but the url provided goes to somebadplace.com, you should not do it. Pretty simple you would think, but some people have found bugs in popular web browsers, and this can mask the true url. These fakes sites are often very official looking replicas of the original site. They could mimic the bank’s website, tricking you into thinking you are logging in there when really the fake site has just collected your account number and pin. Scary thought.

How do you avoid falling into this trap? You can do a few things. If you are instructed to login to your account at website y, open your webbrowser, and manually type the url for y (ie, do NOT click the link in the email). If you really want to click the link, ensure that the destination to arrive at really is the correct place. Using bookmarks is a good practice too. What’s the difference between flipper.com and fl1pper.com? Subtle, but easy to miss.

With this in mind I will relate a strange story. Last week one of my credit card’s sent me a mailing telling me that they had just released their first ever website for managing your account. It is the normal stuff like seeing what charges are outstanding, seeing your current bill, etc. I signed up, gave my email address, and used the site a couple times. Let’s call this company smartcard, and assume their website is smartcard.com

Yesterday I got an email saying my latest statement is ready. I opened the email, and the contents made me curious. The sending email address was smartcard@smartcard.ghi0.com. Hmm, that is not the domain I created the account on. In the email it quotes the last 4 digits of my credit card. All links to the companies website end up going through ghi0.com, and most of them seem to have some kind of tracking token (most likely to see which link I clicked). It’s weird, everything in me says it is a phishing message, but it arrived right when my paper bill was mailed to me. I haven’t clicked any of the links either. Perhaps the ghi0.com is just a redirecting service. Perhaps this email really is what it says, and everything is on the up and up.

As as test I entered smartcard.ghi0.com and ghi0.com into the browser url. Empty web pages are returned. This is another red flag for me

Let’s examine the 2 scenarios.
1) This is a phishing attempt. I am doing the right thing by not clicking the links. I should just delete the email, and maybe wait to see if it happens again next month.

2) It is legit, and from smartcard. If this is the case, then I really don’t want to be using their website. This is bad web practice. It screams bad idea to me. It screams phishing attempt. If I were to receive a phishing message, how do I then distinguish between it and this email? What other bad practices are they using? I want to write to customer support and tell them just how bad this is. I can’t trust them anymore.

Please note: I have changed names and url’s to protect myself (more or less). No need to inform people who I bank with.

Surreptitiously Copyrighted

It amazes me to no end how greedy and stupid record companies have become, and how ignorant they seem to be of the facts. Why would any company or store knowingly punish their customers?

If you haven’t been following the online uproar recently, Sony has released a bunch of CD’s that contain more than just music. These CD’s surreptitiously install evil software onto windows machines even if the user declines this. The software opens up backdoors into the computer, and hides itself from the operating system. This introduces huge security vulnerabilities, and many also consider this spyware. Sony claims that they do nothing with the data they receive, but my thoughts are that they do nothing now. This is all in a misguided attempt to prevent people from ripping the music and sharing it. Yes, they are trying to prevent the people who actually bought the music from using it the way they want to.

I spend a lot of money on music, only so I can be treated like a thief? I buy a product, and the seller assumes I will do the worst with it? Backwards in my mind. Some CD’s get it right though. Bonus material on a disc, and access to content online using the CD as a key are a couple ways to entice people to purchase the CD. I have several CD’s like this. Very nice. That is the way to treat someone.

The latest thing I have read about is record companies shutting down websites and software developers that distribute lyrics for songs. I’m sorry, but that is asinine. The record companies claim they are infringing copyrights. Read here for some background. While I understand that songs and music are copyrighted, whatever happened to treating customers respectfully? I don’t see how these lyrics providers could cause less albums sales? Quite often lyrics aren’t provided in CD’s. Band websites quite often don’t have this information. Why can’t a third party provide it? Someone clue me in to why record companies feel this threatens them and their industry?

I like supporting the artists, but I hate supporting crap like this. Most of the money that I pay for a CD does not go towards the artist. Some of the money that I pay will go towards badly designed DRM, and lawsuits. That sickens me. Almost to the point where I want to stop buying CD’s. Do you think the record companies realize this? I doubt it. Frustrating.

As a photographer I also have to consider my own artwork. I know I would feel disgusted if people were stealing my products. However, I would never pollute my products with something to destroy someones computer. I wouldn’t try to shut down peoples interaction with my product because someone might do something wrong. I recognize it is a thin line, but I think that record companies are on the wrong side. Unfortunately it is going to take something big to make them change their ways.