Tim and the Tin Titan

26.7.05

To Wish Ill Onto Others

I have been having a problem for a couple of weeks. I am getting tons of email bounces because some asshat has decided to use my email address as the forged "From:" of his spam operation. After some investigation, I found that the spams originate from China, advertise a site hosted in Taiwan and are mainly directed at Russian users. No contact info for the hosting, no response to abuse emails. Try to get anyone to do anything about this jurisdiction mess.

When I heard that a Russian kingpin of spam was savagely beaten to death earlier this week, I wondered if it was my guy. Sadly no, the bounces keep on coming. Gives new meaning to "Spam Assassin".

Lance... A Lot

I am a great fan of Lance Armstrong's, but I was a bit worried when the rumors that he was contemplating politics began to appear. I was wondering what kind of a politician he would be, coming from conservative Texas and knowing the Bush family (To be fair, he also know John Kerry and Kerry was in Paris for the win on Sunday).

But look like my fear are unfounded: Not only is Armstrong against the Iraq war, he is an atheist [as pointed out, technically he would be an agnostic since he does not explicitly say he does not believe in god. I have ordered the book, final judgement to come...]

He can be president any day as far as I'm concerned. He certainly can't do a worse job that those in power now and if Arnold can be a governor, he can surely pull it off.

He actually laughs away the suggestions that he would run for governor (but does not deny them), saying he now wants to concentrate on his foundation to help find cures for cancer.

20.7.05

The More You Fight Technology...

... The more it comes to bite you in the ass.

The latest Harry Potter was scanned and proof-read less than 12 hours after it was released. Looks like plenty of users split up the book among themselves, fired up their OCR and assembled the whole thing.

This is after the author categorically refused to release a digital version for fears of piracy. Considering she personally made something like 36 million dollars in one day, I'm not crying for her.
MobileRead Networks - Harry Potter 6 e-book already being pirated!

15.7.05

It's The Little Things

Biking in to work today, I came to an overpass that, at it's top, runs parallel to the commuter rail line.

I got to there just as a train was passing by, heading in the same direction. As I looked up, I saw a woman with a dull look on her face, the standard blank commuter stare. She was looking down in my direction so I waved at her. Her face brightened and she flashed me a HUGE smile. I smiled back. The train pulled ahead and I lost sight of her.

That made my day, I hope it made hers.

11.7.05

TDF Madness

Yeah I'm a Tour de France Maniac these days. It's been the usual stuff for the first week but this weekend was great.

First on Saturday we had a great solo effort by Weening of Rabobank on the final brutal climb and an exciting finale which gave us this extraordinary photo-finish between Weening and Kloden.

Then yesterday, we had Rasmussen, also from Rabobank leave the peloton at the 4km mark and ride by himself all the way to the finish line throught a stage that contained many climbs. I guess it's no surprise that Rasmussen is a one-time world mountain bike champion, he's that good on the solo climbs.

Yesterday was also about Armstrong loosing the yellow jersey and 2 and a half minutes on the CG yet the team seems to be saying it was planned. It's shaping up to be a good one.

7.7.05

Zombies!

Local hipsters decide to put the smackdown on LARPers in my hometown by dressing up as zombies and crashing the party:
the scourge :: Hipster zombies versus knights of the nerd table!!!

Another Great Google Hack

Now this one does not come from Google itself but rather form people doing great things with the GoogleMaps API.

GMap Pedometer.

Just double click on the map to put down a point and it will calculate the distance between those two points. Keep on putting down point and it will keep a running count. Great for planning bike or running routes.