Catching a code injection hacker in the act

Several days ago, I installed the Redirection plugin from Urban Giraffe. It’s truly awesome, in more ways than one. John Godley, you are an amazing programmer! As I re-arranged the categories on my blog, I tracked the 404 errors through the plugin. On Saturday morning, I noticed the following bit of information in my log:

You [...]

The winner of the “Object-Oriented PHP” book drawing

… is Trevor Carpenter! I announced the drawing on Tuesday, 9/25, and the deadline was the evening of Friday, 9/24. I’m going to mail the book to Trevor shortly.
Trevor has a few websites, and they’re all worth mentioning. First we have his personal site/blog, then his photoblog, called CamarilloWalk, his professional photography site, called Scribe [...]

Bugs in Lightroom 1.2

The latest version of Adobe’s Lightroom, 1.2, introduced corrections for several issues such as XMP auto-write performance, Vista grid display errors, and noise reduction for Bayer-patterned sensors (the majority of digital sensors on the market user Bayer patterns in their color pixel distributions). It also introduced support for new cameras such as the Canon EOS [...]

My grandfather’s garden

My grandparents on my mother’s side always had a garden, no matter where they lived. They were city folk, and even when they lived in an apartment, they managed a nice little plot of land in the back of building, where they grew fruits and vegetables. Later, they moved in a house with a big [...]

A lesson in civics and citizenship

I happened to look up resources on the Internet that help people prepare for the citizenship test. If you’ll remember, I announced last year that the citizenship test would get harder. I was amazed to see how many sites out there charge for access to information that’s already available freely, right on the USCIS website. [...]

Book giveaway: Object-Oriented PHP, by Peter Lavin

Remember my last book giveaway? I meant to get around to this second one a little sooner, but life intervened. This time, I’m giving away “Object-Oriented PHP“, by Peter Lavin. I reviewed this book back on August 30, 2006. It’s been sitting in my library since then. It’s still relevant, but more importantly, it’s still [...]

John Loves Mary (1949)

“John Loves Mary” is a movie made in 1949, starring Ronald Reagan, Jack Carson and the husky-voiced Patricia Neal. The script was adapted from a Broadway play by the same name, originally written by Norman Krasna. I found the story charming, and wondered why I liked it so much, till I discovered that Norman [...]

Camera review: Olympus EVOLT E-510 DSLR

Back on August 1st, Olympus PR invited me to attend the Legg Mason Tennis Classic here in DC and shoot with their new DSLR, the EVOLT E-510. I enjoyed myself thoroughly at that event, and my thanks go out to Michael Bourne from Mullen, the agency that handles the PR for Olympus.
When I arrived there, [...]

How I handle contacts at Flickr

Many of you have added me as a contact at Flickr after you read my last post about Zooomr. You may also have noticed that I did not add you back. Please don’t think I’m ignoring you, but my contact strategy at Flickr is completely different from the one I used at Zooomr.
For one thing, [...]

Song of the Thin Man (1947)

“Song of the Thin Man” (1947) is the sixth and final installment in the Thin Man series, starring Bill Powell and Myrna Loy. The series started in 1934 with “The Thin Man”. In the midst of the depression, that first movie struck a chord with people and was instantly popular. More movies followed, in 1936, [...]

Condensed knowledge for 2007-09-19

A bit of a health theme to this edition of condensed knowledge:

A new CPR technique was discovered. It’s called OAC-CPR (Only rhythmic Abdominal Compression). As its name implies, you only press on the abdomen, eliminating the risk of broken ribs, mouth-to-mouth, and fatigue from pushing so hard. Definitely worth looking into this!
Prozac found in the [...]

Taking a break from Zooomr

For the last month or so, I’ve stayed away from uploading to my Zooomr stream. Now, I’ve decided to stop uploading altogether, at least for the present time. Why? Because I’m disappointed with the way things are going.

You may know me as a staunch supporter of Zooomr. I’ve blogged about it endlessly, and I’ve supported [...]