Sunday, September 05, 2004

Movin' Out (8:49:37 PM) Hey everyone!  Some news at long last from my rusty old RSS feed - first off, I'm blogging again!  Second of all, I'm trying a new blog system for now, at bloglines.  I'm messing around a bit with MT as well, but for now try me at the bloglines location. My new digs can be found here, and the RSS feed is here. Thanks, and see you over there!

Monday, January 12, 2004

Spam of the Day (7:10:14 PM) One of my non-filtered addresses got this message today:   ---   Dear Citicards Member, This letter was sennt by the Citibank sevrers to veerify your email adress. You must clpoemte this pcrseos by clicking on the link below and enttering in the smal window your Citbiank Debit card number and Pin that you use on local Atm machine. This is done for your poercttion -J- becaurse some of our members no logenr have acsces to their email addseesrs and we must verify it. To veerify your e-mail address and access your bank account, clik on the link beloow. If ntohing happens when you clik on the link -c copy and passte the link into the addres bar of your window. [...etc, including fake link...]   ---   Wow.  Very convincing!  Nowhon weel see thru thier ruse!

Thursday, December 11, 2003

Spam arrest (8:52:13 PM) Woo, check it out!  The first felony indictment under Virginia's anti-spam legislation!!  Maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to stem the tide within a few years.  Still and all, I've been finding TMDA does the trick for me, at least for now.  I think we're going to have to find a really interesting balance between strong authentication and trust technologies and the desire to avoid being trapped in a closed bubble.  Part of the real value of the net is that anyone can send me mail - which is also the horror.  I don't want horrible autogenerated porn-spam, but I do want people who read my blog or source code I've written to be able to get in touch with me.  TMDA's challenge-response paradigm works pretty well, but I think there may be better options in the future.  Viva le future!

Hey, pull over, my PDA needs some gas (10:04:34 AM) Hitachi plans fuel-cell for handheld devices by 2005.   Very cool; we might actually see this technology work in our lifetime.  I wonder how they're going to deal with refueling the cells. [InfoWorld: Top News]

Monday, November 17, 2003

Simple Truths, Take 2 (10:20:22 AM) When well-executed (for there are variances even amongst individual assembly-line products), the Dunkin Donuts glazed donut is just a thing of joy.  I will never understand why the Krispy Kreme fans think those gloppy weird-tasting things KK produces are any good.  As always, to each their own.  And in any case, a good homemade donut from one of the few remaining mom 'n pop donut shops completely shames any of the chains. Hope everyone's having a good morning as we cruise toward Thanksgiving and then the end of the year.  Exciting things are going to happen this week, I betcha.

Flex (12:39:25 AM) Macromedia courts Java crowd. Flex, huh?  That's actually not bad!  It's like, super flexible, and it's sort of Flash lexing, and it lets you flex your development muscles.... I'm so glad they didn't actually call it "Royale". :)  Anyway, there should be a bunch of news about this in the upcoming week.  Best of luck to the team, and hope everyone has a blast at MAX!

Sunday, November 16, 2003

Clear and Breezy, Mid-30s (3:57:49 PM) I am 35 years old today.  I switch back and forth between incredulity that I'm this old, and a sort of placid acceptance of cresting the hill which slides inevitably down to... well, 40 and beyond, I guess.  All in all things have turned out pretty well so far, although I'm not leading exactly the life I'd expected of my mid-30s back when I was 20.  Getting older is just weird. I've spent a lot of time talking and hanging out with high school friends in the past week, which has been great.  Lots of synchronicities - my friend Dan (who lives in North Carolina) is contracting up in Boston now for a while, so we went out for dinner and a movie on Thursday.  While we were at the movie, another of our HS friends called his cellphone - a friend who's wife (and high-school sweetheart) I'd just seen for dinner last week in California.  And then the next night I got a call from our friend Jeff to tell me he'd made partner at his law firm in Cleveland!  Jeff and I had a terrific conversation on the phone yesterday, which reminded me what a shame it was that we don't talk more often.  And returning to the birthday theme, Jeff's birthday is Tuesday (he was always frustrated at being two days younger than I was when we were kids - now the tables have turned and he's all excited about it :)). I'm working on writing some example code for our upcoming book (the 2nd edition of Building Web Services with Java) right now, and in a little while I'm going to go out to the blues jam at Johnny D's, play a set or two, and then head to dinner with my family at a new restaurant in the South End called the Union Bar and Grille, which is supposed to be just faboo - it's by the same team that did Aquitaine and Aquitaine Bis. Fittingly, the weather report says tonight's temperature will be "in the mid-30s".  Me too.

Wednesday, November 12, 2003

Simple truths (6:04:56 PM) There is something so viscerally comforting about a purring cat.  No matter what else is going on, or how stressed I am, Kaju can jump up in my lap, settle herself in, and start her motor... and there's a little bubble of peace in the world.

Eclipse (2:10:04 PM) Combining the themes of the last two entries (i.e. eclipses and things that are THE BOMB), I'd just like to note that the Eclipse Workstation Light really rocks.  I now have one for home and one for my Sonic office.  Nice mellow light, energy efficient, and way nicer than those ceiling fluoros...

Sunday, November 09, 2003

FeedDemon (11:34:17 PM) OK, I know - I'm late to the party, but I just picked up the pre-release of Nick Bradbury's FeedDemon RSS aggregator.  It kicks some righteous ass, especially for a work-in-progress.  If you read RSS feeds and run Windows, GO GIT IT!  Beautiful job, Nick.

© Copyright 2004 Glen Daniels.