NCANE.COM going open source

February 24th, 2010

I’ve decided to take my short URL generator and make it open-source. This is for a number of reasons, but I think primarily because I’m emigrating, and sometimes you need to just let things go.

ShutOff 2000’s code will also become open source when I release ShutOff 2010 (that’s a long story – don’t ask).

NCANE.COM’s code-base will be available on Google Code. I’ll update the blog with its exact location when I’ve created the project.

In case anyone is interested, I’m using the MIT licence. No GPL for me, thank you very much.

UPDATE: The project is now at Google Code. You can access it from: https://code.google.com/p/ncane-com-short-url-generator/

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I smite thee, spammers

February 10th, 2010

As the founder of the Smiters of Iniquity, I hereby smite all spammers.

Yesterday, ncane.com and I were targeted by spammers, where a spam email went out to (I expect) thousands of people, purporting to be from me (including my personal details from public DNS records), and a short URL generated by ncane.com.

An over-eager recipient of this spam decided to report it to the entire world. My upstream providers were included, as well as the ISP from where the spam originated. That’s to be expected, and I would have done the same. However, the South African Police were also included, along with various other parties (Federal Trade Commission? Really?).

I’d like to say this guy overreacted, but with the status of spam today, did he really?

I’ve since responded to every contact on the list he reported to, stating that my identity was stolen and abused in this email, so hopefully level heads will prevail. The email clearly did not originate from my server, and my ISP seems to be happy (so far).

I’ve also been forced to update all of my domains’ registration details with an additional layer of obfuscation (without breaking the law of course). I should have done this a long time ago because this was only a matter of time, considering my approach to spammers. But again, why should I have to hide my DNS details in the first place?

If this affects me any more, I think I’m going to throw in the towel and cross over to Google completely, cancelling ncane.com. Seriously, this sort of thing is not good for my mental health.

Some people might say that I should have just deleted the spam I receive instead of reporting it and taking on the spammers as I do, but if I don’t do it, who else will? We’ve become deluged by this spam, and it’s simply unacceptable.

Anyway, that’s my rant for today.

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In Lloydminster, it’s just gone 10 a.m.

February 8th, 2010

And boy, is it nice and brisk!

brrr

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Best firewall ever?

February 1st, 2010

I got this in email. I cannot vouch for its accuracy, but it made me smile:

1. One human cell contains 75MB genetic information.
2. One sperm contains a half of that; that is 37.5MB.
3. One ml of semen contains 100 million sperm.
4. In average, ejaculation lasts for 5 sec and contains 2.25 ml semen.
5. This means that the throughput of a man’s member is equal to (37.5MB x 100,000,000 x 2.25)/5 = 1 687 500 000 000 000 byte/second = 1,6875 Terabyte/sec

This means that the female egg cell withstands this DDoS attack at 1,5 terabyte per second, and only lets through one(!) data package, thereby being the best freaking hardware firewall in the world!

The downside of it is that this only small data package that it lets through, hangs the system for the whole of 9 months!

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Jonathan Erasmus is a Tomcruise

February 1st, 2010

I love awarding this title to someone who kills themselves and sorts out the problem in one move.

On the weekend, a 24-year-old idiot paramedic called Jonathan Erasmus, climbed over a safety rail to take a photograph, after which he fell several hundred metres to his death.

Dumbass Tomcruise.

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Honda Jazz 2002 – 2008 recalled

January 29th, 2010

Honda SA has announced today a safety recall of the previous generation Jazz to inspect and modify driver door power-window switches that may, in some cases, short circuit as a result of water intrusion into the housing.

(Source: Honda website.)

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Apple iPad

January 29th, 2010

I’m not going to defend it or blast it. Enough words have already been written about it. What I am going to say is that I like it and I want one. I’ll even get word processor and spreadsheet apps. I don’t see the need for multi-tasking, because it’s not a tablet PC. And I don’t see the need for more than 16GB of space, because as an eBook reader, it’ll be enough. I estimate most books come in at far less than 1MB, which gives me space for 16 000 at least. Wow.

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South Africa is bankrupt

January 29th, 2010

If you believe all the news, we’re completely bankrupt. There’s no money to fix potholes and traffic lights in Johannesburg, with the (2010® FIFA® World® Cup®)®* fast approaching. There’s no money to run and maintain Eskom, our electricity provider. There’s no money for the pebble-bed nuclear reactor in the Cape.

Then there’s the wonderful story of how we spent R50 million (almost $7 million) on the Miss World pageant. I don’t even care know who won.

In other news, Dr Blade Nzimande, Minister of Higher Education and Training, and secretary general of the South African Communist Party, was on the radio this week preaching about socialism, including talk of nationalising mines, the Reserve Bank, private health, and so on.

I’m all for socialism when enough people are paying tax, but we only have 5 million tax payers. There are around 50 million people in the country. Bankrupt again.

Coincidentally, Blade Nzimande was one of the new Zuma crowd of politicians who took advantage of an Apartheid-era parliamentary guideline and bought himself a R1.1m BMW 750i. Nice car for a self-proclaimed communist, wouldn’t you say? Morally bankrupt, I’d call it.

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* (Apparently®, FIFA® is® so® full® of® shit®, you® can’t® even® mention® them®, or® refer® to® the® world® cup®, without® permission®. So® I’ve® put® registered® trademark® symbols® everywhere® just® to® make® sure® I’m® not® sued®.)®

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Various thoughts and comments

January 29th, 2010

The other day I drove behind a woman driving a Mercedes Benz, and who had two small Dachshunds on her lap, sticking their heads out of the driver’s window. How is this safe?

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I read that Terry Pratchett is a Humanist. I didn’t quite know what this meant, but it appears at first look to cover my belief system as well, so if I were forced to pick a label, I suppose I’d pick this one. I’m not religious about it, if you’ll pardon the pun.

They have a “statement of faith” which reads as follows (my own emphasis added):

Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethic based on human and other natural values in the spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities. It is not theistic, and it does not accept supernatural  views of reality.

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On Monday I’m starting on a new project at work, which has a zero margin for error. I’m even getting my own Business Analyst to help me out. We have to extract data from old storage and re-inject it into new storage, so that the old storage can be freed up. Unfortunately, if we miss some data, there’s no back-out / rollback plan. There’s just too much data and not enough time.

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I butted heads yesterday with one of South Africa’s Spammer Hall of Shame, namely Jaco Derksen. I managed to find out that he uses email addresses supplied by fxstyle.net. They claim to have over 300 million email addresses via opt-in services all over the world. I’m trying to follow up with them, but I’m keeping the Internet Service Providers Association of South Africa up to date.

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Yesterday morning I drove to Pretoria in a follow-up trip to last week. First off, I dropped off documents at the Canadian High Commission (hopefully for the last time before we take our passports through), and then I went to the South African Police Services records division to get our Police Clearance Certificates renewed.

Traffic is getting worse. People do not understand what the speed limits are for, and I would have been able to issue several hundred fines in the hour and a half I was on the road, had I been a traffic policeman.

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Douglasdale SAPS FTW

January 25th, 2010

I’d like to tip my hat to Sibusiso Mtshali, an officer in the Douglasdale Police Station, for taking me through the fingerprinting and form completion for my police clearance certificate. He was fast, very professional, and even took me to the financial officer to pay my R59.

Parking was good, the station was clean (if a little dingy) and everyone was friendly. Even the drunk criminal suspect who was shuffled past me during the hand-cleaning process smiled and waved, but that was possibly coincidental.

Thanks for making an unpleasant task pleasant.

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