Photos from my iPhone.

When living in a foreign country, it is always nice to hear a friendly and familiar voice mixed in the throngs of weird accents and strange places. A favourite time this happened, occured when I was wandering down a market lane in the middle of London, and I could hear John Farnham singing ‘You’re the Voice’. Most times I would just ignore him, but this day it was my birthday, and feeling a bit homesick, I happily stopped in the middle of pushy and obnoxious business folk on their lunch break and listened with an intent ear all the way through to the end, the hint of a tear forming in my eye.

The time before that, again it was a John Farnham song, and appropriately enough  Australia Day 2008. I was in the back yard at Prospect Hill hanging up some washing, and his voice came floating over the back fence from the Polish folk next door’s radio. I have no idea why Polish people were listening to good ol’ Johnny, but it brought a smile to my face, and the realisation it was my first Australia Day not in Australia…

Since then I’ve discovered the 3RRR Breakfasters have a pod cast loaded up each week to iTunes, so I am able to get my fill of familiarity most days now (no Johnny though), almost as if I’m catching the train from Fairfield station on the Upfield line, listening to them live. On previous occasions they have had a segment where they get listeners to call in, giving them a chance to make the team laugh through the recitation of some joke. Sam Pang insists that jokes are not funny. The pod cast of 5th June 2009 contained such a segment, with all manner of dodgy jokes being told. Suffice to say, Sam’s theory still held sway, with the exception of a great gag about dim sims and a library, and a suprise teller.

Just as I was getting off the train at Liverpool Street Station, Fee B-Squared put the next caller through. I had to replay it several times just to be sure my initial voice recognition algorithm got it right. I couldn’t believe it. He played it so cool as well, hanging up right at the end of his joke, knowing he had it nailed and happy to get on with his day.

This good sir, is in tribute to you. I won’t give your game away, but will let my avid readers (all four of ya’s) to listen intently and see if they recognise you. Sorry Mum, this bloke you won’t know, but feel free to listen in. Tis a good gag anyway.

Good to hear your voice across all the thousands of miles mate, and hope you’re lovin life as ever. You made my day.

click to listen -> Breakfasters – 05 June 2009- Familiar voice <- click to listen.

Update 27/07/09: QLD Police had put out a press release sometime in April.

Whatever you do, do not give out any details to anyone that rings you out of the blue and says they can fix your computer. Especially if they want you to go to the site soc321.com.

They will ask you to view your computer’s event viewer log and count the number of ‘errors’ and ‘warnings’ logged. This list will naturally be big… there is nothing unusual in that. It is not proof of problems with your PC.

They may also ask you to sign up for 2 years service and take your credit card details. This is a con to get personal details.

They will ask you to give them access to your computer, so they can ‘fix it’. Fix it they do, but in their own way. They fix it by installing a trojan, worm or other computer nasty that will collect bank details or make it so they can take over your PC anytime for their own nefarious deeds…

This is a form of social engineering. Just because they have ‘proof’ of their legitamacy (they might give you a number to call where the operator will ‘confirm’ their authenticy) they are not what they seem.

If you get a call from them, string em along. Take the mickey out of them. Waste their time. Hang up by all means. Just don’t give them anything!!

Please see the following articles for further information:-

The Age, Ask Chris- New scam targeting Australian Internet users

Whirlpool-phishing over the phone?

Digital Host-Fake tech support call scam – supportonclick, systemrecure and logmein123.com

ctaspley.wordpress.com- Support On Click (aka reading the fine print)

(**Note: The basis of this article now has it’s own SGE Blog page, tracking hotlinking offenders as I find them in my server logs.)

Wikipedia describes hotlinking thus: “Inline linking (also known as hotlinking, leeching, piggy-backing, direct linking, offsite image grabs and bandwidth theft) is the use of a linked object, often an image, from one site into a web page belonging to a second site. The second site is said to have an inline link to the site where the object is located.”

In the greater scheme of the internet, this is what being online is all about, the sharing of information via a spider’s web of links and chains coming together is a mass orgy of information overload.
That’s all well and good though when you aren’t paying for the storage of the data used.
Hotlinking generates a greater bandwidth usage than would normally be used by such a simple website as my own, and with that bandwidth could come greater costs. My website for the small price I pay, only has a limited amount of data that can be uploaded to my viewers each month (approx 10gb. granted I never get close, but you never know, one day i might write something so special that I’m going to need the extra bandwidth to go with a larger readership. I could happen!), and once that bandwidth is used, all further requests to view my website get denied, or I can pay a bit extra to keep the site up till the next accounting period.
I too am guilty of hotlinking. Just look at the YouTube videos I post. I’m not paying for that bandwidth, google is, but that is how YouTube works. They allow their users to do that. It is who they are, AND they can afford it. Beside, they have good stuff that deserves to be shared that helps them generate advertising revenue!! I don’t have that luxury.

So, to prevent cheeky bastards from leeching stuff from my site, I have implemented serverside http referring, that can recognise when a request for an image is coming from off-site, and serve up a different image to the one they were expecting.

Now, I don’t really understand what it is about this particular image that is a favourite of hotlinkers, but it seems to be linked to at least once a month.

Favourite of hotlinkers

But, instead of getting this wonderful image of Bart Simpson about to get booted up the arse by the Australian Prime Minister (Simpson’s episode “Bart vs Australia”), they get this…

The returned Hotlink image

Look, I know it is petty, but I just love it when some one gets burned on a public forum, when they think they’re presenting a humourous image that represents the discussion at hand.

A great example that prompted me to write this entry, is the latest hotlink episode that has so far generated 6,985 views for a commentor on a forum, declaring he has a small penis. His response was in regards to a post on the Gawker Network’s DeadSpin website, about Tim Orchard flashing his bits on live television during an interview in the locker room.

I can’t but help laugh at the irony of my hotlink image appearing on that story. I think it just makes it!

Websites and articles that have come under the wrath of penis shrinkage:

Deadspin.com: Australian Rules Football Finds Its Visanthe Shiancoe

Newcastle-online.org: Southampton Relegated

TheTownEnd.com : Jonathan Ross

MDB.Scout.com: Gilbert Brown and his Boot (comment has been edit to remove the image, but the other comments that followed it are great!)

Fark.com: Some poll about politics.

ConservativePunk.net: No idea, it’s all in Polish (This one, for a change, was linked to a picture I took of some advertising at Liverpool St station, where Iggy Pop was floggin Time Insurance policies).

Found these being sold in the local Waitrose supermarket. Stocked up, and ready to enjoy throughout summer.
Before I left Australia, I was sinking at least one of these everyday. They are so good! Just one of the smaller things I miss… That and 1/2 litre bottles of stong ice coffee…

The bringing together of two of my favourite things, Ferris Bueller and Deloreans.

The blogging software I’ve been using for the last couple of years, doesn’t seem to be under development anymore, with the last update being pushed out back in April 2008. The problem is, that without further develpment, any security holes that are discovered won’t get fixed, leaving my website open to attack (again!). And this software does have a couple that are like gaping rust holes in the side of an oil tanker.

There are coders on the support forum that are able to help users to fix issues, but without a full roll out of the updated pages, they’re just hack jobs. Enough to keep the software working. Bit like the coat hanger or gaffa tape that holds a car together. Good enough but only for the short term.
So… I have abandoned Simple PHP Blog, and given my loyaties over to Word Press.

Wordpress is lightyears more developed, with greater functionality than that of SPHP, with of course a hell of a lot more security. It’s able to pick up emails from a special address and automatically post them to my site, and I’m also able to use an iPhone application to post entries from where ever I am (like the post below).

It’s taken a couple of day to reformat the template to match the design of my site and to import all the previous posts and comments. I think in the end it will be worth it.

The old blog will stay online, but if any hacker thinks they can use the security issues to take over my site, good luck. The files are going to have all write access removed.